Reinvent the Refrigerator. Since its debut in the 1940s, it hasn't changed much in design. Put a bunch of food in a large cooled box and hope you remember to eat its contents before it rots. There has been some lame attempts by slapping a LCD panel on the front with an RFID scanner, but you still have to remember where you store the food. I think automation and inventory management via mobile device is key. There is a lively discussion on quora right now, but I'd like to also invite people to poke holes and/or add value to my idea.

Basically it's an automated parking garage that is shrunk down to the size of a fridge. You can learn more here I apologize in advance that I'm linking to FB, it's just were the idea currently lives.

The benefit of the company is providing a greener fridge that helps people not waste food, which is a big problem right now. Americans waste 34 million tons of food waste each year. The amount of green house gases, labor, and transportation costs to produce food just to throw away food is maddening.

Obviously the first fridge will cost the same as a luxury car, since you're basically cramming a robot into a fridge, but so was the first computer. I can see this fridge being the next big opportunity where everyone throws out the dumb fridge just like everyone did with their CRT for an LCD.

That being said, I welcome your comments and questions.

Hi, I'm Laur, I'm in my mid-thirties (wow, when did that happen?), a software developer from Romania, currently living in the Netherlands. I found this site, as many others, via MoR, and I've been lurking for a while now - I'm subscribed to the RSS feed and slowly working my way through the sequences.

When young (and arguably foolish), I've made a few "follow your heart' kind of decisions that resulted in significant damage to my personal life, finances and career. For the past seven years I've been working my way out of that hole mainly by analysing and double-checking my personal choices in a rational way and it has paid off in a big way. I learned that the heart does not think, and the first instinct is good for keeping you out of the reach of lions, but worthless when contemplating a complicated problem with far-reaching consequences.

I personally believe in a humanist approach to rationality, where people are taught, helped and guided along this path. I'd rather live in a world where most people are rational most of the time than in one where some people are rational all of the time. Working towards that end, I've recommended LW (and MoR) to most people I know.