I found this blog excerpt on the Ad Age website and was, needless to say, shocked:

Coca-Cola’s New Drink Fountain Is a Gusher

Don’t Ask the Cashier to List Flavors

Posted by Natalie Zmuda on 08.29.08 @ 04:16 PM

Coca-Cola Co. is testing a sleek new beverage fountain that can dispense more than 100 beverages. Very cool in theory — until you’re stuck behind some guy paralyzed by the sheer number of selections.

http://adage.com/adages/post?article_id=130643

After finding myself unable to speak for a period of time longer than I’d like to admit, a multitude of questions swirled in my mind. First of all, why? Second of all, why? Third of all… why? Fine, it was one question that swirled in my mind. But it certainly wreaked a lot of havoc while it was there.

Okay. So let’s pretend we’re eight years old again for a minute (as if this isn’t my normal mindset), and play the what-if game. What if Coca Cola came out with this supersized beverage dispenser? Here come the real questions. For instance, are there even enough beverages in existence to fill a machine that can dispense a hundred of them? Would Coca Cola start dispensing… dare I say it… Pepsi Products? How about off-brand soda of the convenience station or rural grocery store variety? Where will 100+ types of soda be stored when it’s patiently waiting to be dispensed? Will it be underground? Will people be falling into soda pits left and right? Will these so-called soda pits become the next tar pits and set off a chain reaction that ultimately results in the extinction of the human race? And isn’t anyone other than me worried about additional CO2 emissions caused by the bubbles (not to mention burps) that accompany 100+ varieties of soda? Will there be enough bathrooms to accomodate the result of all of this extra soda drinking?

And while we’re not worrying about falling into bubbling, noxious pits of soda, or concerning ourselves with global warming and the eminent extinction of the human race, we’re going to be waiting in hours-long lines. All while people like me feel an inherent need to browse every single soda option available. And what happens, then, if Coca Cola allows us to MIX different types of soda? Let’s do a bit of math. If there are 100 different kinds of soda, and Coke lets us mix these varieties, you could actually have 9.33 x 10 (to the 157th power) possibilities for your drink. I can’t even deal with thinking about that much selection. I’m afraid I might internally combust. Which could very well happen anyway when this machine lures me into consuming the equivalent to my body mass in soda.

Here’s a bit more math. How big will this drink dispenser be? An average drink dispenser containing a mere three drinks is 10.25 inches long. 100 drinks/3=33.3333, multiply that by 10.25 inches, and you have a soda dispenser 28.4 feet long. That’s bigger than some buildings. Luckily, Coke is pretty smart- perhaps their analytical skills exceed that of a third grader- and has compacted the dispenser into one little machine. This only raises my concerns regarding soda storage pits, by the way.

But, I digress. All of this is leading up to one very important question: Do we really need this? No. Do we want this? No. Will we use this? Heck yes.

According to Coke, innovation is their lifeblood. What they fail to mention is that their blood is also infused with 100+ varieties of soda. Get prepared, yours will soon be the same.

I am unfamiliar with the world of interactive.

There, I said it. Cat’s out of the bag. Or maybe it was never in the bag, because most of you have probably figured this out after the repeated, wide-eyed, blank expressions that result when anyone mentions things like wireframes, scripts, or coding to me. I have absolutely no clue what anyone is talking about.

So, you’re trying to tell me that when someone says javascript, they aren’t offering me some alien variety of coffee? Too bad, I have an insatiable coffee addiction. And when Liina says wire flames, she is actually referring to wireframes and, talented as she is, cannot spontaneously combust websites online? Thank god, I don’t need the CIA on my case. Again.

I’m a writer here. Who knew I’d have to learn an entirely new language to work with interactive? In fact, after my first day here, I left the building in a state of confusion far beyond the typical bewildered fog that surrounds me. I ran straight to my trusty Webster’s dictionary, which I affectionately refer to as Big Red (unless I have to carry the thing, in which case I’m something rather less than affectionate). Believe me, it’s big. Like bigger-than-my-physics-textbook big, a feat I hadn’t thought possible prior to the discovery of this sixty pound red dinosaur at a garage sale last summer. There is just one teeny, tiny problem about my good friend, the dictionary- it was published before I was born.

This really hadn’t been a hindrance before my first day at Azul 7, when I lived in a world shrouded by the pleasant belief that websites appeared magically from thin air. However, the time was finally upon me to look up all the outlandish internet terms I’ve heard of but never understood before. Such peculiar terms as javascript and bandwidth. So of course, I turned to Big Red and searched its dusty pages for enlightenment in the form of wireframes.

I found nothing.

I moved on to scripts. A passing mention of manuscripts and old documents. I tried interactive. Something or other about human contact. At this point, I was getting pretty frustrated with my former friend. I decided to look up the mother lode- the internet.

There it was, between internee and internist: internaught.

My dependable old dictionary did not even contain the term internet. Maybe that’s why it was sold for fifty cents at a garage sale, cast off the shelf in a fit of cruelty, only to be replaced by a newer, smaller dictionary that accepted and defined our digital future. I felt betrayed and deceived by my affable giant. There was nothing left for me to do but visit the source of my confusion- I went online and quickly found myself on Wikipedia.

There amidst pages and pages of user-produced content, I found clarification and subsequently lost two hours of time. I now understand that javascript is not my precious coffee but instead a language for coding websites, and wireframes are layouts containing descriptions of a website’s functionality. So, the next time someone slides down the slippery alphabetical slope from wireframes to wire flames, not a thought of spontaneous online explosions will enter my head (Okay, well maybe just one. It’s a pretty cool idea, after all). Not only this, but I’ve learned what the ‘dev’ team is and AJ shouting “SCRUM!” in the mornings doesn’t even sound like a strange German word to me anymore.

Thus far, this experience has led me to two conclusions:

1. I’m going to get the hang of this.

2. I’m going to need a new dictionary.

Nevertheless, don’t ask me to define the internet. We’re in the process of doing just that.