I’m sure folks have written and thought deeply about this, but I keep thinking about how temperature sensing is a type of automation that is rarely discussed in conversations about technology’s impact on the nature of labor.

Thinking about the longstanding history of community ovens, restaurants, and food outside the home and the craftsmanship and learning required to bake bread or preserve foods safely.

It’s so much easier to do these things with almost no experience thanks to temperature sensing!

Temperature sensing (and control) also plays a big role in a lot of manufacturing and testing processes. Now it has been digitized and made incredibly precise thanks to our improved understanding of what heat actually does.

I wonder if temperature sensing might be considered one of the first sensory experiences that humans were able to integrate into computers (perhaps light sensing being another… I think pressure was a bit later).

Does anyone know?