In the same way that Heidegger asserts that an airplane on the runway cannot be understood as an object, the microwaves in our kitchens cannot be understood as objects either. The microwave, being a piece of modern technology, is forced to be always at the ready for human use, perpetually electrified and only one button press away from warming up food. This aligns with Heidegger’s idea that the distinction that modern technology holds over previous technologies is “standing reserve,” ready to activate at a moment’s notice to accomplish whatever task it is designed to do. This differs from the line of thinking that a microwave is merely an object, which is different from a refrigerator or an oven in various ways. Through the lens of “standing reserve,” we understand a microwave and an oven as the same. Heidegger seems to say that “standing reserve” is unnatural (not exactly bad, just unnatural) and that it is such a modern phenomenon to have such dominion over our materials in excess that we stop viewing them as individual things, but as resources to use at our discretion.
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At the end of your post you bring up this transformation in the way things are viewed, from individual items to resources that are at our will. While it is easy to inherently consider this negative, as a failure of empathy for the Earth, your more neutral stance to how technology puts the world in standing reserve led me to think about it differently than I previously had. There are many examples one could point to about how improvements in technology made humans more exploitative of nature, but interestingly it is also technological improvements that can help reverse these negative effects those prior technologies caused. Both the good and bad impacts of technology are unnatural, yes, but we must look past the connotation of this word as you said.
To use your example of the microwave, doesn’t this invention reduce our power usage? While microwaves are always plugged into power, that is part of why they are immediately ready rather than requiring preheating like an oven. There is also their ability to be powered by electricity as opposed to the still quite common gas ovens. Compared to other methods of reheating food, microwaves are more energy efficient, can use clean energy, and their convenience can lead to less food waste. I don’t think this makes microwaves a blanketly good technology, and the increasing popularity of microwaves lead to further exploitation of land and resources by increasing demand for frozen foods, but the ability to heat food up in mere seconds is not something that should be viewed as negative simply because it places our world in an unnatural standing reserve.