the other day i went shopping at Albertson’s. it was just an ordinary trip to the grocery store… until i got to the check out lanes and noticed that in addition to the regular lanes, they now had this new self-checkout stuff. you basically go up to your own little station, scan all of your own items, bag them yourself, pay then machine, and then you’re done. you don’t have to deal w\/ a human at all!! i was *so* impressed!! how tech, how futuristic, how modern! this means that we won’t have long ass lines at grocery stores due to there only being a few checkers on hand. nothing could be better…<\/p>\n
… or so i thought, until this morning i read this post from steph: http:\/\/www.xtrinity.com\/yosoy\/archives\/000052.html <\/p>\n
wtf?! how can they automate starbucks like that!! it makes making coffee so impersonal. it made me think: if they took automation this far, they could very easily get rid of baristas entirely. why not just have the machine mechanically make your coffee from start to finish? grab a cup, pour espresso, add milk, etc etc. the sad thing about that… is that there will be no human interaction left. it seems so empty and sad. and that… is the same issue i have with self-checkout. there’s no more real people to talk to. no human contact. just you and the computer and your cheese.<\/p>\n
as we advance, society becomes more and more fragmented. everyone walking the streets has a cellphone to their ear and is in their own little headspace. when calling 411 or other phone services, we are greeted by recorded computer voices that respond to us using voice recognition. bank tellers are replaced by atms. more and more places will automate like this, until you can go through your whole day w\/out any interacting with a single live human. soon we’ll be stuck in our own private bubbles… only seeing strangers from behind the panes of glass of their cars during our commutes.<\/p>\n
-v<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
the other day i went shopping at Albertson’s. it was just an ordinary trip to the grocery store… until i got to the check out lanes and noticed that in addition to the regular lanes, they now had this new self-checkout stuff. you basically go up to your own little station, scan all of your … Continue reading “the future is here……but is it a good thing?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-san-francisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}