In the old days, and I mean old days, us kids lacked social media and video games. Evenings were devoted to homework, followed by reasonably predictable television fare with such staples as Gunsmoke, Andy Griffith, and even Candid Camera. Saturday mornings, the three (yes three) television stations catered to kids, and we watched largely mindless fare from Scooby Doo Where are You, Hanna Barbera's The Jetsons and The Flintstones, and of course the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. Mindless patter? perhaps. Many of our juvenile consumption patterns were tied to which cereal had the most appealing (or in retrospect appalling) advertisements. We were actually influenced by "cookoo for Coco Puffs," celebrity endorsements, and even product placements."
Among the morning cartoons, perhaps the best writing belongs to Rocky and Bullwinkle, in which a hapless Moose (Bullwinkle) and a flying squirrel (Rocky) repeatedly save the world from the evil conspiracies of Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale (they certainly sounded like soviet or at least eastern block names back in that Cold War). Were we subtly prejudiced against our cold war adversaries by this writing and the characterizations of Boris? Of course, good always prevailed, And, week after week they reappeared, as periodically noted by the writers in a nod to the invincibility of "Moose and Squirrel":
Natasha: "Boris, is Moose you said you killed in previous episode?"Boris: "Look, it's his show. If he wants to be hard to kill, let him."
Throughout, the show, and particularly its narration, the writers wove a complex and intriguing dialogue. Much or even most of the the wit and witticisms were likely lost on us hapless juvenile viewers, but it included some really snappy repartee. Periodically, the far more intellectual Rocky would transition us through the next segue. Two of my favorites were his "And now, here's something we hope you'll really like" and "And now, here to tell you everything about anything is Mr. Know-It-All." Ironic, iconic, hapless, hopeless, and yet entertaining on multiple levels.
Channeling Rocky this morning "And now, here's something we hope you'll really like."
Entrepreneur reported recently that Amazon Opens Revolutionary Whole Foods. The store is a first or sorts; it is a "register-free shopping" experience. Robotics are not new to these pages. See Robot in the News (October 2021) and Robotics and Innovation Back in the News (September 2016). I have been a tech follower for many years, and was really awakened to the coming technological revolution in 2015 at the annual NCCI Issue Symposium in Orlando. See A Lifechanging Seminar (May 2015). I have returned to technology with posts like A Button Labelled Codger Mode (June 2017), Running Man from Pensacola (July 2015), and The Coming Automation (November 2017). So, no surprise that the new and improved grocery has opened.
This new innovation store is in Washington D.C. and is equipped with what has been dubbed the "Just Walk Out system." According to Entrepreneur, you merely "load (your) . . . carts and leave." There is no cashier and no self-service scanning station. In fairness, this is not such a new idea. The story reports some smaller convenience store-sized outlets began using this technology in 2016, as does an Amazon-labelled grocery store that opened in 2021. But, it is the first of its size in the Whole Foods company.
With a combination of sensors and cameras, this new technology keeps track of what is being placed into your shopping cart. It is technology not unlike self-driving car technology and requires the use of an application and QR code or card reader that identifies the customer at the outset of a shopping venture, tracks him/her through the shopping experience, and assesses the charges at the conclusion. The prediction is that this type of process is the wave of our future, the next step in our progression "from the Flintstones to the Jetsons," which one of the JCCs often uses to describe the workers' compensation litigation transition from stone tablets to electronic filing in the first twenty years of this century.
This progress is inherently relevant to the world of workers' compensation. For years, I have been warning that the very foundations of the world of work are shifting, and this illustrates again precisely that premonition. The job title "cashier" may disappear from our lexicon entirely. We may strive to make our grandchildren understand the concept of a human scanning bar codes on packages. If we succeed with their understanding of bar codes, we might next try to explain that cashiers used to push down mechanical buttons and hit a mechanical "enter" bar with the side of their hand in order to tabulate the cost of purchases. We have come a long way since those days, only 50 years ago or less.
Entrepreneur says that this transition to "cashier-less" will eliminate "more than 3 million" jobs in this country alone. And, the article warns us that as jobs evaporate, so does the foundation for "a functioning society." I tried to make that point in Universal Income a Reality Coming? (November 2016). In fairness, no experiment in universal income has succeeded long, nor demonstrated viability as a broad-spectrum societal paradigm. Let's remember that jobs matter, engagement matters, and people matter. This is true economically and socially. One wonders if such a shopping experience will catch on.
As I came to grips with the progress regarding cashier-less stores, I ran across an article on Business Insider regarding a man's contention that Facebook (n\k\a Meta) cost him "his company and $100 million." The story is not about robots, but about software that may encourage and even manipulate us. The entrepreneur featured in this article says that the extent to which social media algorithms influenced his business "Sends chills down (his) . . . spine," and that business should beware in a broad perspective.
In fairness, the story suggests that the success of this business was largely due to Facebook algorithms, and their ability to draw people to his web presence. The company foundation was "women-focused" and featured "uplifting content," on a website. The Facebook mathematics drove "90% of organic traffic" that came to that site; 90% of this small business' web traffic was generated by the background functionality of Facebook's algorithms steering people to the "fluffy content" that was produced and provided by this small business.
The company owner featured in the Business Insider story explained that Facebook became disenchanted with the "fluffy content" and changed the mathematics or algorithm. This change in 2018 "upended the digital news world at large," and "throttled" the traffic to his site. The algorithms began instead to "promote posts that it thought people would engage with the most," with a goal of keeping people on Facebook longer, possibly to increase exposure to advertisements, and to increase "clicks?" The description of growth and then starvation at the hands of the same source, Facebook algorithms, reminded me of the idiom "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," or perhaps Meta does in this context?
The featured company owner also asserts that the algorithm also "began to promote" "violent, false, and divisive content." The contention is that the algorithm and its ability to steer or influence our attention essentially determines what we do or do not read on the web. He explains that the Facebook engagement can thus be a double-edged blade, that the algorithm can bring millions of eyes to a product, site, or service (or opinion), but may as quickly shift attention elsewhere. The story is an intriguing expose of allegations of the manner in which computer programs may entice or discourage our consumption, whether for goods, news, or entertainment.
And, it is alleged that our proclivities and tendencies are driving some of the decisions. We may be "more apt to click on and engage with sensationalistic and divisive content," which may drive more content creators to produce such content, and more algorithms to drive that content. This will perhaps draw, engage, and retain viewers, to the delight of some advertisers and producers and the consternation of others. Remember, this entrepreneur was not critical of the algorithm process when it was drawing eyes to the "fluffy content," and only became critical of the process when it drew eyes elsewhere.
It is not so different. perhaps. from the evil plot of Fearless Leader in the live action and animation mixture of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (Universal Pictures, 2000). Fearless Leader, for whom Boris and Natasha work, contrives to control people's minds through television. The plot is directed at controlling our desires, and tricking us into behavior. However, Leader's evil plot fails when he cannot control our hero, Bullwinkle. Alas, Bullwinkle's brain is essentially too small to control. But, apparently, some of us are influenced by television ads, even if the purveyor is not some evil genius bent on world domination.
We might well wish to hear at this point from Mr. Know It All, and an explanation of how we might avoid the mind control or influencing of algorithms and computer programs. We might want to understand how our interaction with our computers are being monitored and even possibly manipulated. As we stride forward into the tomorrow of increasingly technological lives, to what extent are our free will and autonomy real? Perhaps we will all enjoy a cashier-less world, shopping without that pesky human interaction ("Did you find everything you were looking for today")? Or, possibly, some of us will long for the sentimentality of human interaction and content.
In the end, perhaps our emotions remain free of the influence of some algorithm, instruction, or suggestion, and we will ultimately decide for ourselves whether we shop in the newfangled, robotized store of tomorrow (today?) or the old-fashioned, human interaction store of yesterday's nostalgia. We may be influenced by the "progress," or the sentiment, but more likely by the price. In that regard, perhaps we are likely to select the store we find most time-efficient and cost-efficient for our personal preferences. Or, perhaps we will go where the algorithms of social media and television steer us? It is, simply stated, an interesting time in which we live.