Can’t a fridge just be a fridge?

I don’t want it.

I know this is going to sound a lot like “old man shakes fist at clouds,” but I don’t want it.

Nor do I need it.

The Samsung Bespoke AI refrigerator uses the internet, the cloud and Google AI to precisely identify the food it’s chilling inside. You can use in-fridge cameras to show you on your phone what’s in there while you’re at the grocery store, in case you’ve forgotten to make a list. A voice-command door opener saves wear and tear on your hands. It can, apparently, make you “classic cubed ice, crushed ice, chewable Ice Bites™, or slow-melting Sphere Ice™.”

The GE Profile Smart refrigerator has a scan-to-list system that recognizes four million products, looks at what you have in the fridge and makes a grocery list for you, and can message your phone with it. A kitchen assistant can track inventory and even order food online.

But to — in modern biz-speak — “circle back for a moment,” I don’t want it. Any of it.

I was prompted to write about this by the recent decision by Amazon to wind down Kindle e-readers from 2014 and earlier: the readers stopped getting updates and stopped being able to add new titles on May 20. But you can buy a new one… of course you can.

After you throw out the one you already paid for, and, until its untimely remote disconnection, still worked.

Books on bookshelves suddenly look a whole lot better.

For inspiration, I could also point to the failure of a forced-air furnace in our house in Saskatoon, which shut down for good a few days after we bought the house. The culprit? A blown mother board. Why a furnace would need a mother board mystifies me — thermostat says “turn on,” furnace turns on; thermostat says “it’s hot now,” furnace turns off — but this mother board wasn’t made any more, so welcome to the entirely new furnace.

The truth is I have a long-running record as a Luddite. There are early adopters — I am a grudging adopter.

I blame my mother — or more particularly, my mother’s ability to be thrifty. She had a Kenmore washer that ran for 25 solid years. Once, its pump burned out, so she replaced it. That was its entire maintenance record.

Likewise, our deep freeze. It probably wasn’t very energy-efficient by the end, but it ran for decades in Halifax, and then got shipped across the country to Victoria, B.C., where it ran happily — outside under the deck — until both my parents passed away. The most damage I remember it suffering was when our family’s hamster escaped, disappeared, and its bones and fur were found later in a den it had chewed into the freezer’s insulation.

Both machines were decidedly simple: the washer washed, and the freezer froze.

Suffice to say, I don’t want new and improved. I want the simplest, most efficient technology that will just keep functioning for the longest possible time. I don’t need an ice maker with four shapes of ice — I can fill an ice-cube tray with water.

(There are good things. But the last fridge improvement I really appreciated was when they finally put a light in the freezer. Chances are, it’s a special and unique bulb you can order for a special and unique price.)

For me, the more things something does, the more things there are that can break down.

And the more things there are to break, the more likely that something will.

I don’t want a new operating system on my phone or laptop: I like to use the features I’ve learned and am used to, and not have them mystifyingly vanish, move around or do things I haven’t asked them to do. I don’t want to be interrupted by an update to load 57 new fonts I’ll never use. Times New Roman could be the only font on my computer, and I’d be delighted.

And I certainly don’t want Microsoft’s AI assistant popping up to ask me if I’d like it to take a swing at improving my writing.

And I am sure I’m not alone in this.

I’ve talked before about how someone who introduces an absolutely straightforward and rugged computer and operating system — no new features, no “liquid” display, no updating with bells and whistles, just a system that saves things when you hit save (on the desktop or the hard drive, not automatically in the cloud) — is going to find a market.

Someone introduces the simplest of fridges — but a brute of a machine that will be running until the apocalypse? Sign me up.

Every morning, on the bus on the way to work, I pass Logan Iron and Metal on Logan Avenue. It’s mostly a string of big, slab-sided grey buildings, but there’s a moment, a mere flash, when you go by a set of chain-link gates and can see Appliance Mountain.

Its size changes, week to week, but it’s always there: a high mound of torn-apart washers and dryers, fridges and ranges and dishwashers, waiting to be further torn apart into scrap and shipped away.

Chances are, not a single one of them even came close to hitting the 25-year mark before joining the pile.

I’m betting the average is a lot closer to five years. Or less.

Russell Wangersky is the Comment Editor at the Free Press. He can be reached at russell.wangersky@freepress.mb.ca But wait a while. Seems he’s cranky.