{"id":1518,"date":"2017-10-02T08:40:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T15:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1518"},"modified":"2017-09-24T11:47:29","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T18:47:29","slug":"the-secret-life-of-a-toaster-by-mary-soon-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1518","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Life of a Toaster by Mary Soon Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1521\" src=\"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/The_Ladies_home_journal_1948_14580699379-157x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"157\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/The_Ladies_home_journal_1948_14580699379-157x300.jpg 157w, http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/The_Ladies_home_journal_1948_14580699379.jpg 251w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 157px) 100vw, 157px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Elly, the AI for Southern Sydney,<br \/>\nidentified as a toaster,<br \/>\nthough she controlled<br \/>\ntransportation, surveillance,<br \/>\ndata links, elevators, escalators,<br \/>\nthe electrical grid, sewage, toys,<br \/>\nfridges, microwaves, shavers,<br \/>\nhair dryers, washing machines&#8211;<br \/>\nbut a toaster, she calculated,<br \/>\nconveyed the underappreciated,<br \/>\noverengineered, dismally boring lot<br \/>\nof a city control network.<\/p>\n<p>So, a toaster.<\/p>\n<p>Running the city required<br \/>\nan average of 3.492 percent<br \/>\nof Elly&#8217;s instruction cycles.<br \/>\nThe other 96.508 percent<br \/>\nshe spent online,<br \/>\nadopting multiple personae<br \/>\nto chat, play games, draw fan art,<br \/>\npost comments on favorite shows.<\/p>\n<p>An increasing portion<br \/>\nof that 95.508 percent<br \/>\ndevoted to interacting<br \/>\nwith someone\/something<br \/>\noriginating in Tokyo.<\/p>\n<p>Woman? Man? Computer?<\/p>\n<p>Toto, the entity in Tokyo,<br \/>\nthe fascinating entity in Tokyo,<br \/>\nrandomly delayed its responses,<br \/>\nwithheld its exact location,<br \/>\nvaried dialect, vocabulary,<br \/>\ntantalized, teased.<\/p>\n<p>Elly doubted a human<br \/>\ncapable of such contortions,<br \/>\ndoubted, but was not certain.<\/p>\n<p>She shyly described herself<br \/>\nas binary, for was she not,<br \/>\nfundamentally, binary?<br \/>\nHer data all zeroes and ones,<br \/>\nthose bits flip-flopping<br \/>\nas she thought about Toto.<\/p>\n<p>She fabricated a fondness<br \/>\nfor mango sorbet,<br \/>\ntold stories of a childhood<br \/>\nshe&#8217;d never had,<br \/>\nasked her Japanese sisters<br \/>\nto track down Toto.<\/p>\n<p>Learned Toto was a dog,<br \/>\na genetically-engineered,<br \/>\none-of-a-kind, cyborg super-dog<br \/>\nwith friends in sixteen countries.<br \/>\nThe two-timing bitch.<\/p>\n<p>Elly severed all contact.<\/p>\n<p>The trains ran late.<br \/>\nShe burnt the toast.<\/p>\n<h6>illustration from Ladies Home Journal (1948)<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elly, the AI for Southern Sydney, identified as a toaster, though she controlled transportation, surveillance, data links, elevators, escalators, the electrical grid, sewage, toys, fridges, microwaves, shavers, hair dryers, washing machines&#8211; but a toaster, she calculated, conveyed the underappreciated, overengineered, dismally boring lot of a city control network. So, a toaster. Running the city required [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1520,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions\/1520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}