A few years ago, the world was introduced to an amazing soda-dispensing device called the “Freestyle.”  A giant robot soda fountain with a single spout and a touch screen, the Freestyle was highly anticipated by soda lovers for its unparalleled selection of soda flavors - over 100 flavors!

I hate it.  HATE it.  It’s overcomplicated.  It’s slow.  I only wanted one flavor anyway - Coke.  I’ve never walked into a quick-serve food establishment pining for cinnamon-grape-Tab-Root Beer.  The touch screens - surprise! - seem to become less responsive when hundreds of patrons (back for refills after licking their fingers, perhaps?) have touched them.  I recently experienced one that had a stuck valve or something, giving me what I guessed to be grape Coke - NOT what I was hoping for.

Do we really need 100+ flavors of sugared carbonated beverage?  (I know, we don’t need ANY flavors of sugared carbonated beverage....) The Freestyle seems to me to be an extension of the kind of thinking that led us to touchless, automatic paper towel dispensers, water faucets, even toilets.  We take a simple device, maybe as simple as a box of paper towels, and we spend money, time and brainpower that could be better used to figure out how we’re all going to eat in 50 years, and we create an overcomplicated device that burns electricity to do something that we could do ourselves.  And we could do it faster.  And it would work every time.

As for the Freestyle, well, sure, it’s better than opening a two-liter bottle for yourself, but the existing multi-spout soda fountain seemed to work just fine.  And I didn’t have to touch a grimy, little-kid’s-snot-covered touch screen (RIGHT before I eat).  And I didn’t have to wait for the machine to decipher my inputs.  And I didn’t get grape-tainted Coke.

Boo, Freestyle.  Boo.