Adam & Amber’s Blog

A while back I posted about a pizza vending machine and made the point that food preparation could easily be done more efficiently by robots. From a business standpoint I still agree with this, there will come a tipping point where it will be much more cost effective to maintain a robot, then employ people.

Recently, this topic of conversation has come back up around the lunch table and it got me thinking of another aspect of this robotic society. In a world of ATMs, Coffee Vending Machines, and Online Ordering we are quickly coming to a day when there is no reason to directly interact with a human all day. It is not hard to imagine a very efficient world where every non-internet business involves just a touch screen and a credit card swipe. I am not sure how I feel about that, this world would allow the introverted to stay introverted (which would make them happy), and the businesses could charge extra for the extroverts to get human interaction (which would make the businesses happy), but is anything lost?

I remember when I was in middle school one of the most uncomfortable things for an introverted youngster like myself to do was order pizza (probably not where you thought I was going). On half days a couple friends would usually come to my house (yes, introverts can have friends) and we would order pizza, for some reason making that phone call was nerve-racking. It seems idiotic to me now that I would be afraid to call and order pizzas, but it probably had to do with the fact that as a middle schooler I never really had to directly interact with “adult” strangers, alone, before that. It took some time, but I got over it (as most people do), but if it hadn’t been for that experience, or others like it, would I have ever broke out of my introverted shell? To put it another way, if all I had needed to do was go online and order the pizza, then I would have never been forced to face that irrational fear. This makes me think that the side effect to this ultra-efficient future, is a psychological one, and I am not sure this world needs more adult introverts (except, maybe for population control).

Looking at this another way, human interaction cuts down on the inherit stupidity of people. I found this blog today about a guy who decided to test out the Dominos Online Pizza ordering system, which allows you to be very specific about what you order. I am not saying that beef-bread isn’t a perfectly valid order, I just think that you should have to go through the indignity of an “excuse me? what was that again?” if you really want to order it. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand the flip-side of this, in my world of phone ordering an introverted, beef-bread loving, adult may never be able to get their beef-bread fix. Maybe, but maybe today’s satiated introverted beef-bread lover, would have been yesterday’s extroverted beef-bread restaurant pioneer, so we could all have enjoyed this little known culinary masterpiece.

Maybe none of this matters and we will adapt to fit technology into our society, instead of technology replacing our society, but hey, I got to use “beef-bread” in my argument and that has to count for something.