Enriching the food experience: A design journey through innovative technologies for creating, experimenting, consuming, socializing, and playing with food

When we were invited to write a chapter on food and technology for this book, we thought that the enterprise would have deserved an entire book. Digital technologies are pervading the dining table, the kitchen, and any digital or physical space where we can grow, create, share, enjoy, consume, learn about, recycle, store, and distribute food. This chapter is by necessity a personal journey on the theme, which touches upon how digital technologies feature the food experience in diverse faces and directions combining emerging approaches. To help reflecting on the food experience enabled by digital technologies, we draw a fil rouge around the way digital technologies are likely to change our experience of food. Our fil rouge unravels around five themes that represent stopovers along a narrative and experience-centered journey focused on creating, experimenting, consuming, socializing, and playing with food. Our review does not claim to be exhaustive or complete. Rather, it aims at devising some “food for thought” and stimulating a sensitivity toward potential evolutions and transformations induced by digital technologies in the food realm.