- StoryCorps and sauce-maker Prego partnered on a family recording device
- No AI or screens just capture dinner conversations
- Only available for a limited time
Prego, a company famous for making tomato sauce 🤌, and StoryCorps, a non-profit that’s essentially the world’s best listener, have partnered up to help families remember what dinner time was like before the smartphone.
Called The Connection Keeper, it’s a puck-shaped audio-recording device that is about the size of a Prego sauce jar cap and should fit neatly in the middle of any dinner table.
There’s no screen or operating system, just a pair of spatial audio microphones, capable of recording CD-quality audio, backed by an ARM Cortex-M7 CPU. It records to an on-board 16GB microSD card for up to 8 hours, if your dinners go that long.
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It only records when you hit a button, starting almost instantly, but the idea is not to just capture, say, an unfortunate dinner table argument. Instead. StoryCorps provides a set of prompt cards with The Connection Keeper to help launch your gathering with some useful, revealing, and impactful discourse. The cards and Connection Keeper come as part of a limited-run $20 bundle that includes (naturally) a jar of Prego Sauce and a box of spaghetti.
StoryCorps is kind of an expert at this. They’ve been recording everyday people’s stories for 20 years. I’ve heard many of them on NPR, but they’re also collected in the US Library of Congress.
In fact, those who use the device can choose to upload and store their dinnertime chats on a special part of StoryCorps so they can retrieve and listen to them at any time, and even allow StoryCorps to upload them to the Library of Congress so everyone can hear them.
While some studies have found that families sit in silence (or stare at their devices), a more recent survey found that the 2020 COVID pandemic forced people back to the dinner table and the discussions it sparks.
Obviously, not every dinner is worth saving, but imagine a last meal with great-great-grandmother, who’s talking about her time at a US Japanese American Internment Camp during World War II. Or maybe grandpa’s harrowing tales of the War in Vietnam.
The device includes a USB port, which you can use to initiate a high-speed transfer to your PC. To keep things simple, the puck automatically switches from recording device to high-speed transfer hard drive as soon as you plug in the USB cable.
In case you’re wondering, there is no AI. The system is not understanding or transcribing the conversation. It’s more like plopping a tape recorder down in the middle of your dinner table.
Just remember to say, “prego,” or, um, “please” before recording any of your dinner guests.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
