User:Alice/Chapter draft

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How - by making connections between food and technology through the lens of techno-idealism and discussing the impact of technology on our current/future realities

Why - critically understand current approaches to food and the characteristics of the communities around them

   - what is the effect of treating natural processes from an engineering perspective, and the complete disconnection between humans and their food
   - efficientization of life while obscuring processes
   - The celebration of not having time to tend to your bodily needs properly, and at the same time putting so much emphasis on giving the body personalized nutrition in the most pleasureless way

The starting point for me is the importance of food, in particular cooking in our lives. Since we are deeply involved and surrounded by technology, it inevitably has an important position in our approaches to cooking. An attempt to look at food through the lens of techno-idealism. One of them is the complete lack of cooking. I'm trying to understand the extremely complex way in which food issues are tackled through technology. I'm also trying to deconstruct the techno-idealism present around food and health. One point of focus at the moment are meal replacements, a startup business model that is heavily funded by VCs both in the US and other Western countries. This is also sometimes combined with the notion of personalized nutrition (recipes) that is a consequence of humane genome testing being made available by startups. As described in the pervasive labour union, where humans are encouraged to see themselves as brands, here the focus is on humans as efficient machines.

I want to dwelve deep into the context in which these companies became so popular and well funded while being so obscure and flat out dodgy, and in which communities started to grow around them. What are their goals and expectations? How do their products impact our lives, or way of relating to our environment? How are some of the paradoxes explained (efficiency vs extremely complicated, empowerment through knowledge vs fully obscured processes)? Are food replacements the materialization of startup culture. Fermenting is the materialization of FLOSS?

The celebration of not having time to tend to your bodily needs properly, and at the same time putting so much emphasis on giving the body personalized nutrition in the most pleasureless way

Right now I am trying to get insights from all sides of the issue. I'm talking to both enthusiasts, casual consumers and using my own perspective. I'm also looking at the opposite side of the coin, tech enthusiasts who are using technology and hacking for further opening up processes, focused on critical aspects rather than efficiency or design. Public - people who are interested in the role of food in their lives, in making better choices for their bodies and for the environment, who enjoy cooking (or not), who are tech enthusiasts (or not).

Public: An example of this is the varied range of people who came to two workshops I have in mind, who are focused but still broad enough to get a wide range of interested people to attend. Wikipedia Ores, and Food Futures

- people who compromise on important aspects of their daily life in favor of efficientization and profit (life hacks), people who see the entrepreneur as a model of life people who have the same reaction as I do, but cannot fully grasp why