CONCEPT
The Thermomix Example
Rosa's paradigmatic small case of a device that converts cooking from action (involving judgment) to compliance (following instructions) — the template for algorithmic disenchantment across every domain.
The Thermomix is Rosa's favorite concrete illustration of what algorithmic systems do to human activity. The device is a premium kitchen appliance that integrates scale, blade, heating element, and touchscreen, telling the user at every step what ingredient to add, when to stir, what temperature to set, how long to wait. The meals it produces are excellent. They are consistent. The process is efficient. And the cook who uses it has stopped cooking. The cook has become a program-executor — a person whose activity in the world has been reduced from action, with its attendant judgment, risk, and responsiveness to circumstance, to mere compliance with instructions generated by a system that has already determined the outcome.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Rosa introduced the example in a 2023 Philosophie Magazin interview and expanded it across Situation und Konstellation (2025). The force of the example lies in its ordinariness. The Thermomix is not an exotic AI system; it is a kitchen appliance. And yet the