Appliance Repair 1000 Years in the Future - What Would It Look Like?

What would appliance repair look like 1000 years in the future? A 21st-century expert appliance repairman tries to explain...

First of all, we have to assume humans will still be around in 1000 years in order for appliances to still exist. Seeing smiles while helping people every day in the year 2024, and considering how long humans have been around already, it's actually easy for me at least to assume humans will still be kicking around in the year 3034, but what would appliance repair look like? Perhaps the next question to ask would be if humans would still even have appliances in 1000 years, let alone a need to even repair them.

After fixing appliances for 36 years and counting, I definitely think humans will have a need for appliances no matter how technologically advanced we get. I often have time to think about this subject when I'm at work. I see washers and dryers and wonder how long it will take before these two appliances can be melded into one appliance that washes, dries, and folds your clothes for you. I suspect it might be another twenty years before some mad inventor figures out a way to combine a washer and a dryer into one appliance, sort of like how we've already combined fridges with ice makers, but so long as humans wear clothes made out of fabric then fabric washing machines will be necessary, unless of course we invent clothes that somehow wash themselves...

While I'm thinking about the future of appliance repair, I'm usually also imagining what my grandson would look like when he's fully-grown and operating the business in my stead. That might be another twenty years from now, but I bet his day-to-day will look extremely different than mine. In twenty years, appliance repair companies could be flying drones to fix people's appliances, drones that use AI to fix the appliance without the need for human intervention. At that point, the appliance repair company would simply exist to maintain and insure the drones that do all the work, and so there might actually only be one human employee in a 22nd-century appliance repair company, my grandson. This might be 100 years in the future though, now that I think of it, as twenty years seems unlikely.

Speaking of AI, I used an AI image generator to create the photos you see here on this article, to see what AI itself thinks what appliance repair 1000 years in the future would look like. In fact, when I asked the AI directly what appliance repair 1000 years in the future would look like, this is what it created:

Not to be too judgmental, but I think I could do a way better job of illustrating what appliance repair in the future would look like compared to this AI image, especially after considering that I'm a hardened appliance repair veteran with nearly 40 years of experience and all. We've covered briefly what appliance repair 20 to 100 years in the future would look like, with my grandson potentially insuring drones and whatnot, but my honest opinion about the difference that 1000 year could make might shock you.

I think the bulk of appliance repairs taking place in the year 3034 will be taking place in outer space, either in Moon and Mars dwellings or in spaceships, because we're already on track to become an interplanetary species within the next few centuries, as human survival may depend on it due to space debris collisions with  Earth. I have sincere love for humanity, which is why I love my job so much because I get to help humans live more comfortably by fixing their appliances, so I really do hope we're an interplanetary species in 1000 years. If so, humans living in spaceships will still get body odor, will still have need to wash dishes if we haven't invented some new weird way of eating yet, and so therefore we'd still have need for machines of some kind that wash our clothes and dishes, not to mention machines that keep our food chilled and machines that cook our food. Today, we call these machines appliances. Today, they have no real intelligence behind them aside from the codes in their circuit boards that tell them how hot or cold to get on certain notches of the dial. In 1000 years, we might not even call these machines appliances anymore, and that's because they might be fully intelligent machines capable of making their own personalized decisions. In other words, we might call them robots.

I've seen enough episodes of Futurama to imagine what a robot that can wash clothes inside its own stomach might look like, but rather than humanoid robots with AI these futuristic machines might still be stationary box-shapes but with AI integrated inside of them. They'll be synced to your humanoid robot assistances, however, so that the clothes washing and drying machine, the refrigerating and dishwashing machine (which might also be combined into one by now, if all these machines aren't already combined into one by now...), can send signals to each other to determine, based on the human user's need, what day the clothes should be washed, what temperature food should be chilled, and the humanoid robots will manage all this for you, so that the human owner simply needs to leave their dirty dishes on the table and their dirty clothes in the hamper. Next time they look at the table, it will be fully set with clean dishes, and next time they look at their hamper, the clothes will be cleaned and folded elsewhere in the clothes drawer.

All this is to say that appliances combined with the aid of humanoid robots will make human life even more comfortable than it is today. Today, we still need to take our dirty dishes off the table and put them in the dishwasher with our own hands. But in 1000 years the dishwasher and refrigerator might be combined into the same machine and it will be condensed and much smaller because robots rather than humans will operate it and so there will be no need for buttons and interfaces. In 1000 years, while you're cruising through space in a spaceship and your clothes get stinky because you visited the treadmill, all you need to do is throw your stinky clothes in the hamper and the next time you find them you'll see them freshly cleaned and folded in your clothes drawer. This is how appliances will likely operate in 1000 years, but when it comes to repairing them the human aspect will also be removed. Like how today's human aspect of taking wet clothes out of the washer and putting them into the dryer will likely be replaced by humanoid robotic assistants, so too will the human aspect of fixing appliances when they malfunction. In fact, this means, because these finely-tuned AI robots manage your appliances for you, and because they run on a strict schedule optimized to your lifestyle, there might be no need to ever repair the appliances at all, because they'll never malfunction, because robots are constantly maintaining them, and other commercial robots are constantly maintaining and repairing your domestic robots!

Perhaps there are clearer words to explain this vision, but if I tried to make it easier to understand I'd conclude by saying that appliances 1000 years in the future might never need repairs to begin with because robotic assistants who clear the table and cook the food will also be constantly maintaining the appliances needed for human comfort. Human comfort will increase as we have less chores in the domestic space, even if that domestic space is in a spaceship.

If you have ideas to share about what you think appliance repair would look like 1000 years in the future then please share them in the comments. Thanks for reading The Appliance Repair Blog!