Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy -- Self-service savings
Tom Walker wrote: I think we should also be paid when we do the corporation's work for them--as in self-serve gas stations, wading through voice menus, and the soon-to-come automated supermarket checkout. The supermarkets would argue that we already are paid because they pass on part of their savings to us as lower prices In theory, perhaps. In practice, rather than the consumers, it will be the share-holders and the manufacturers of the automation machines who reap the savings from lay-offs due to automation. In other words, it's a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, not to the poor. As usual, privatization of the profits and socialization of the costs, not vice-versa. Chris
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy, Odysseus and the Cyclops, the invisible hand....
--
From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D.
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; #ECOM - COMÉ
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy, Odysseus and the Cyclops, "the
invisible hand"
Date: Sunday, February 13, 2000 10:27AM
snip, snip,
Cordell...
A corollary to this is that in the future Nuremburg social policy crimes
tribunal the answer will be, 'I am sorry sir but it is company policy.' Who
is accountable? Nobody.
Brad,
But, no doubt about it, more often it is the other way
(2) The only way to kill the cancer was to: (A) Pay
off *everything on the account including anything
we had charged after the latest statement in full +
the cash advance*, and also *not use the card
until the check cleared*. A first line supervisor
told me the magic number, which was a couple
hundred dollars over the balance due. (B) we
did as we were told. [Oh, yes, the supervisor told
me she was not allowed to give me her supervisor's
name, and threatened me about my verbal abuse of her!]
(C) We got our new monthly statement - WITH
ANOTHER FINANCE CHARGE.
So yesterday I go to my neighborhood Fleet branch,
and the manager, after about half an hour of herself
having trouble getting anywhere, finally gets
the finance charges cancelled and the tumor
removed and also she gives me the name of the
person to bring back to the branch if my next bill
is not right.
Needless to say: (1) I went in the branch making
it very clear I was very angry [because I felt *helpless*!].
And (2) I thanked the manager profusely for her help.
So there's the two sides of "self-serve", in my
opinion.
"Capitalism" is one of mankind's greatest
inventions: It enabled exploiters to claim
they were only hurting you because thay had to
hurt you to not hurt you and lots of other
people worse ("the invisible hand"). Computers
added a second good reason why nobody
is to blame for your (i.e., in each case: my)
getting hurt -- because the computer does it that
way to *everybody*. Stalin and Hitler were idiots: If you
didn't like what they were doing to you,
you at least had a target to try to
shoot at.
As Odysseus would have answered the Cyclops if
he was alive today:
Cyclops: "Who put out my eye?"
Odysseus: "The invisible hand of the market did it!"
Cyclops [calling his colleagues for aid]: "Help!
The invisible hand of the market put out my eye!"
And, of course, none of his colleagues come to his
aid, because they all know that that's just what the
invisible hand of the market does to Cyclopses --
so there is no problem [Odysseus's real answer,
of course, was: "Nobody" -- and, when the Cyclops
yelled: "Nobopdy has hurt me!", all his colleagues
figured he did not have a problem, because he told
them so himself!]
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
---
![%THINK;[XML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
A community is about people. People perform many functions than just the one at hand. Some years ago I consciously continued to go to the full service station near our house, paying a slightly higher price for gas. The person who pumped the gas was another pair of eyes and ears in the community. Whether he fully realized or not he scanned the sidewalk and street while he did his duties and if a senior was in distress or a lost child appeared he could do something. He also kept a wary eye out for the odd drunk that hung around the nearby liquour store. He provided an external benefit to the community. The stuff he did beyond the task at hand was a public good. Since I believe in community I thought I should support this public good. Well, you know how this story goes. Shell gas stations felt he wasn't selling enough, they yanked his lease, he became the manager of a large high volume self service station in the burbs and last I heard he died of a heart attack (or was it heart break). He was a shy man, but in the structured environmnet of the station he had a clear role and provided many services, some that he may not have fully appreciated. BTW his old station is now a parking lot. So when all of you are pumping your own gas (sometimes getting grease on your clothes, and forgetting or neglecting to check under the hood) think of the private and public loss as you amble up to the bullet proof cage to pay your bill to someone who wants you to pay and move on as quickly as possible. Sure there are often gains in time, but there also losses--- all too often we overlook the myriad losses in our quest for private efficiency. arthur cordell -- From: Andrew U. D. Straw To: Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COMI Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy Date: Sunday, February 13, 2000 11:36AM In my own experience, it is more pleasant to self serve than to have to wait for someone else (who may be serving another customer) to do a menial task. Especially for things like filling up the tank with gasoline. And (sticking with the gasoline case) what if one wants to pay with a credit card so all one's expenses can show up on one monthly bill? Many people don't like having to carry cash around to pay for everything. Being able to simply swipe a card at the pump and get exactly how much is needed is very convenient. Having to go inside the store, wait in a line, and then wait for the receipt to print out seems like time wasted. That is, unless this "more friendly" system is being pushed by those who vend the potato chips and other junk foods one finds curiously located where people stand and wait. At a full-service gas station, paying with a credit card means waiting for the employee to go inside and wait for the receipt to print. Also, to say that customers should be served by people who work in a fume-filled environment all day for a low or minimum wage does not make sense. It would be better to pay a slightly higher tax on the cheaper, self-served gas and use that money to support community colleges so former full-service gas station workers can enroll and learn more fulfilling--and ultimately more useful--skills. To my mind, the future of work should be better than simply reversing automation to create more low-skilled jobs. Andrew Straw Fredericksburg, VA - Original Message - From: Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COMÉ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Victor Milne [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 9:11 AM Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy Bravo! Self service is no service at all. We just access part of the bank's (or supermarket, or gas station, etc.) mainframe, and doing the work ourselves, complicate our day and put people out of work. Amazing. And we call it progress. arthur cordell -- From: Victor Milne To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy Date: Saturday, February 12, 2000 12:22AM - Original Message - From: Bob McDaniel To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: February 11, 2000 6:58 PM Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy [snip] In this way may evolve a rationale for paying people for consuming. This is where some similarity with the Tobin tax perhaps becomes most explicit. We may see emerge what some writers have already anticipated: micropayments on numerous purchases, i.e. payments based on bits of information. While individually miniscule, in the aggregate the pay out may be substantial. I think we should also be paid when we do the corporation's work for them--as in self-serve gas stations, wading through voice menus, and the soon-to-come automated supermarket checkout.
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy -- Self-service savings
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 13:32:59 +0100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christoph Reuss) Tom Walker wrote: I think we should also be paid when we do the corporation's work for them--as in self-serve gas stations, wading through voice menus, and the soon-to-come automated supermarket checkout. The supermarkets would argue that we already are paid because they pass on part of their savings to us as lower prices In theory, perhaps. In practice, rather than the consumers, it will be the share-holders and the manufacturers of the automation machines who reap the savings from lay-offs due to automation. In other words, it's a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, not to the poor. As usual, privatization of the profits and socialization of the costs, not vice-versa. Chris == Do I detect just a little "Ludditizm" here? What about the theraputic value of work. Humanity does have an urge to "creative effort" to different degrees. Ed Goertzen, Oshawa
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
"Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COMÉ" wrote: A community is about people. People perform many functions than just the one at hand. [snip] I think this is always important to keep in mind. One especially important instance, according to my hypothesis, is *laissez faire* capitalism. Its supporters constitutte themselves as *communities* organized around [around what? well, alas, around the destruction of community for others, and, perhaps unwittingly, in the end, for themselves...]. I am fairly confident that Bill Buckley Jr and his "cronies" constitute among themselves just as vital a community as the citizens of the classical Greek polis constituted among themselves, or "good guys", like the Wobblies, constituted among themselves, etc. The "problem", of course, in the case of laissez-fairers et al., is [to be scientific, and use mathematical arcana:] that the function over which they compute the integral is not recursive, i.e., the set of workers in the one case, and of slaves in the other case, is not identical with the set of entrepreneurs in the one case, and citizens in the other. So that there is a way in which the salvation of Everyman on this earth is prefigured, albeit in the form of involuntary self-alienation, in the oppressing classes (but also, of course, often, when we've read a message, we throw it away as no longer worth keeping...). "Yours in discourse" +\brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[XML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
Bravo! Self service is no service at all. We just access part of the bank's (or supermarket, or gas station, etc.) mainframe, and doing the work ourselves, complicate our day and put people out of work. Amazing. And we call it progress. arthur cordell -- From: Victor Milne To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy Date: Saturday, February 12, 2000 12:22AM - Original Message - From: Bob McDaniel To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: February 11, 2000 6:58 PM Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy [snip] In this way may evolve a rationale for paying people for consuming. This is where some similarity with the Tobin tax perhaps becomes most explicit. We may see emerge what some writers have already anticipated: micropayments on numerous purchases, i.e. payments based on bits of information. While individually miniscule, in the aggregate the pay out may be substantial. I think we should also be paid when we do the corporation's work for them--as in self-serve gas stations, wading through voice menus, and the soon-to-come automated supermarket checkout.
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy, Odysseus and the Cyclops, the invisible hand....
"Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COMÉ" wrote:
Bravo! Self service is no service at all. We just access part of the
bank's (or supermarket, or gas station, etc.) mainframe, and doing the work
ourselves, complicate our day and put people out of work. Amazing. And we
call it progress.
[snip]
Self-service sometimes is a *big* service. If I had a
car I liked (e.g., the BMW 318ti I lusted after when
I had a long commute to work -- You had better believe I
would pay *more* to pump the gas myself instead of letting
some Who-cares? bring that sharp piece of
metal near my enamel!
But, no doubt about it, more often it is the other way
around. In August my wife committed the almost
mortal sin of getting a cash advance from a non-Fleet
ATM machine (we bank with Fleet because they
bought out Nat West...).
We always pay our credit
card balances in full each month [I like the "float",
and not carrying cash]. Somehow this little
financial cancer cell got into our bank accounts
*without showing up in the monthly balance*. So we
start getting *FINANCE CHARGES!* Christmas Eve,
I call up the bank to try to get the thing straightened
out. To make a long story short: (1) I found out that
anything you pay on your credit card account is
applied *TO THE LOWEST INTEREST BALANCE FIRST*, so that
(2) The only way to kill the cancer was to: (A) Pay
off *everything on the account including anything
we had charged after the latest statement in full +
the cash advance*, and also *not use the card
until the check cleared*. A first line supervisor
told me the magic number, which was a couple
hundred dollars over the balance due. (B) we
did as we were told. [Oh, yes, the supervisor told
me she was not allowed to give me her supervisor's
name, and threatened me about my verbal abuse of her!]
(C) We got our new monthly statement - WITH
ANOTHER FINANCE CHARGE.
So yesterday I go to my neighborhood Fleet branch,
and the manager, after about half an hour of herself
having trouble getting anywhere, finally gets
the finance charges cancelled and the tumor
removed and also she gives me the name of the
person to bring back to the branch if my next bill
is not right.
Needless to say: (1) I went in the branch making
it very clear I was very angry [because I felt *helpless*!].
And (2) I thanked the manager profusely for her help.
So there's the two sides of "self-serve", in my
opinion.
"Capitalism" is one of mankind's greatest
inventions: It enabled exploiters to claim
they were only hurting you because thay had to
hurt you to not hurt you and lots of other
people worse ("the invisible hand"). Computers
added a second good reason why nobody
is to blame for your (i.e., in each case: my)
getting hurt -- because the computer does it that
way to *everybody*. Stalin and Hitler were idiots: If you
didn't like what they were doing to you,
you at least had a target to try to
shoot at.
As Odysseus would have answered the Cyclops if
he was alive today:
Cyclops: "Who put out my eye?"
Odysseus: "The invisible hand of the market did it!"
Cyclops [calling his colleagues for aid]: "Help!
The invisible hand of the market put out my eye!"
And, of course, none of his colleagues come to his
aid, because they all know that that's just what the
invisible hand of the market does to Cyclopses --
so there is no problem [Odysseus's real answer,
of course, was: "Nobody" -- and, when the Cyclops
yelled: "Nobopdy has hurt me!", all his colleagues
figured he did not have a problem, because he told
them so himself!]
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
---
![%THINK;[XML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
I'm not suggesting that every form of consumer automation is an inconvenience. For instance, using an ATM is quicker than a teller--for whom you had to fill out the paper work--and internet banking is a real boon for someone like me living out in the country. However, I think we should just forget about systems where the consumer does as much work as the displaced employee. We need those jobs for people at the low end of the skills spectrum. - Original Message - From: Cordell, Arthur: #ECOM - COMÉ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Victor Milne [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: February 13, 2000 9:11 AM Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy Bravo! Self service is no service at all. We just access part of the bank's (or supermarket, or gas station, etc.) mainframe, and doing the work ourselves, complicate our day and put people out of work. Amazing. And we call it progress. arthur cordell -- From: Victor Milne To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy Date: Saturday, February 12, 2000 12:22AM - Original Message - From: Bob McDaniel To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: February 11, 2000 6:58 PM Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy [snip] In this way may evolve a rationale for paying people for consuming. This is where some similarity with the Tobin tax perhaps becomes most explicit. We may see emerge what some writers have already anticipated: micropayments on numerous purchases, i.e. payments based on bits of information. While individually miniscule, in the aggregate the pay out may be substantial. I think we should also be paid when we do the corporation's work for them--as in self-serve gas stations, wading through voice menus, and the soon-to-come automated supermarket checkout.
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
On Sat, 12 Feb 2000, Victor Milne wrote: I think we should also be paid when we do the corporation's work for them--as in self-serve gas stations, wading through voice menus, and the soon-to-come automated supermarket checkout. The supermarkets would argue that we already are paid because they pass on part of their savings to us as lower prices -- which means we are then supposed to buy MORE stuff so that the increased demand creates jobs for the supermarket clerks that have been eliminated by the self-service. Tom Walker
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy-- PCs and the meaning of life
Ray E. Harrell replied: Well, it had to come to this when the road was taken by the West that relations with an object as a physical extension of the slave was the meaning of life rather than the growth of consciousness. ... So Mr. Gates is just the latest version of work for objects sake rather than for the evolution of the mind and soul. ... The problem is that real personal work (work for its own sake) is considered play while the manipulation of the environment is the only "work" there is. As long as you believe that you deserve Gates and the rest. Maybe we should call it the "Future of Play". While the concept of "computer slaves" and of "work for objects sake" is clearly inherent and even promoted by IBM (coming from the Mainframe ages) and Gates (who "embraced and extended" it), it absolutely cannot be generalised to computers as such. Quite on the contrary, the *Personal* Computer (which wasn't invented by IBM and only reluctantly copied by them) is basically *enhancing* the individual expression of artists and authors (just imagine what Mozart et al. could have done with a Mac!), and as a self-owned means of production, the computer can also enhance personal independence. With the Internet, even more so. So "Mr. Gates" is quite the antithesis of the original purpose of the personal computer. Btw, Ray, isn't it ironic that you (the Artist) are using Windows 98 (obviously not for artistic expression!?), whereas I (the Engineer) am using a Mac without any of Gates' software ? ;-) Chris "It is a rare case that I would ever have to reboot a Mac server because it ceased functioning or froze up; the [Windows] PCs, on the other hand, keep me gainfully employed." --Peter Visel, Information Systems Manager ^^
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
On Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Christoph Reuss wrote: How all this _surplus_ work (that would be UNnecessary with decent software) should be _paid_, is a different question (especially for the "end users"!), and this question doesn't seem to bother Mr. Gates (as in the quote above). Considering that Gates is the recipient of a share of all this unnecessary spending it would not bother him. "The problem (and the genius) regarding Microsoft's products is bloat. Microsoft's penchant for producing overweight code is not an accident. It's the business model for the company ... While [bloatware has] made Bill Gates the world's richest guy, it's made life miserable for people who have to use these computers and expect them to run without crashing or dying." -- John Dvorak, PC Magazine Tom Walker
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
Well, it had to come to this when the road was taken by the West that relations with an object as a physical extension of the slave was the meaning of life rather than the growth of consciousness. Poor Maslow got the credit due to the fact that his Western readers saw his diagram as steps rather than concentric circles in time.So Mr. Gates is just the latest version of work for objects sake rather than for the evolution of the mind and soul. I'm sure that he considers his work as worthwhile as any you might devise. The problem is that real personal work (work for its own sake) is considered play while the manipulation of the environment is the only "work" there is. As long as you believe that you deserve Gates and the rest. Maybe we should call it the "Future of Play". REH Christoph Reuss wrote: Tom Walker quoted MR. GATES: Well, part of the lesson of economics is that there are infinite demands for jobs out there, as long as you want class sizes to be smaller, or entertainment services to be better, there's not a lump of labor where there's a finite demand for a certain number of jobs. And so, as efficiency changes, such as in food production, the jobs shifted to manufacturing. As efficiencies were gained there, those jobs moved into services. In fact, there's no shortage of things that can be done. So, it's not like we're going to run out of jobs here. ^ Yes, indeed the "qualities" of M$ products are maximising the amount of work for PC supporters, network administrators, technical writers (vast manuals!), PC course teachers, hardware manufacturers (HW "arms race" to cope with the SW's resource wasting), and most of all, "end users". How all this _surplus_ work (that would be UNnecessary with decent software) should be _paid_, is a different question (especially for the "end users"!), and this question doesn't seem to bother Mr. Gates (as in the quote above). The statement that "there's no shortage of things that can be done" is trivial and quite crucial in the field of environmental work, but the "multi-million dollar question" is always: How can it be funded ? How sad that all the billions that are being wasted for inefficient M$ products and its bugs/viruses/crashes are lacking in environmental work that would be so much more urgent. Chris "The problem (and the genius) regarding Microsoft's products is bloat. Microsoft's penchant for producing overweight code is not an accident. It's the business model for the company ... While [bloatware has] made Bill Gates the world's richest guy, it's made life miserable for people who have to use these computers and expect them to run without crashing or dying." -- John Dvorak, PC Magazine
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
As a Mac user I tend to be somewhat smug when many of my friends/relatives who use PCs complain of numerous problems and the need to get technical help. But, then, I use VirtualPC with Windows95 on my Mac because of my preference for a genealogical application available only for the PC. Ironically, Win95 seems quite stable in the Mac environment. But, actually, Tom Walker's post led me in some other directions ... There is probably no shortage of things to be done, but if we define a job as " a regular activity performed in exchange for payment, especially as one's trade, occupation, or profession" then there appears to be a problem. As we all know, volunteers with other sources of income perform any number of useful and necessary tasks to smooth out the rough spots in our society. And many social services increasingly rely upon voluntary donations as government cuts back its support in favour of reducing the tax burden. And that is what government ought to do - put pressure on all of us to become more creative in seeking a new basis of support as we find that the increase in income from tax reduction is slipping away to pay for private healthcare, education, and various social services. Just as the Tobin Tax on foreign exchange transactions was intended to capture some of the millions of cross-border dollars, so we might ponder how to capture for society some of the returns from automation (cybernation). At present most of the return goes to the high-tech sectors which design and produce the hardware and software which provide the infrastructure of our cybernated systems, but the rest of us in our highly interconnected economy have indirectly played a role in the emergence of such systems. Sometimes such a role has been in the form of money through investment in stocks, mutual funds, and other financial instruments, and if one has some savvy in these matters some financial reward is enjoyed. Others serve in seemingly unrelated roles which, nevertheless, contribute to the ambient quality of life. They ought to be entitled to participate in the largesse of our cybernated systems. The large corporations which disburse these emoluments are forming a new aristocracy with total control over the means of production. This development may be roughly analogous to the landed aristocracy of mediaeval and pre-industrial days and the reformation of that system required violent and bloody revolution, though not in every instance. What all of us have in common is that we are consumers. If we don't consume (i.e. buy) then the producers cannot survive. We vote with our dollars. As the producers vie for our dollars they wish to appear (and actually be) magnanimous. The large sums which flow into advertising and other promotional activities may be perceived as a tax (albeit an indirect one) on the consumer. Those of us who are shareholders may actually have some say in how this money is spent. But even non-shareholders can and do exert pressure on the corporations to support various good works. Of course, often it is the corporation itself which offers financial support to some institution in return for advertising space. The idea of Coke signs on hospital beds or Microsoft banners in the video content of educational DVD-ROMs in schools may not sit well with many of us but, then, neither were the dark Satanic mills of the 19th century everywhere welcomed with open arms. But they were but a stage in the evolution of our present system. Now, while it may be argued that they were an unnecessary stage, and with such hindsight one might agree, they were the product, even then, of an emerging learning society. Firms may learn that a social conscience is good for business. (Some may have to learn the hard way!) In a fully fledged learning society, citizens will advance beyond their role as consumers to that of information providers. As consumers people provide information by the simple act of purchasing an item or visiting a website. Frequently a purchase is made via a credit card which enables the credit company to construct a purchasing profile of its clients; similarly, websites can create "cookies" which are stored on a surfer's computer drive and contain information on what items a visitor clicked on while surfing the site. This information is valuable and can enable producers to reduce cost by selling directly to niches most likely to buy their products. It should follow that those who provide this information ought to be paid for it. In this way may evolve a rationale for paying people for consuming. This is where some similarity with the Tobin tax perhaps becomes most explicit. We may see emerge what some writers have already anticipated: micropayments on numerous purchases, i.e. payments based on bits of information. While individually miniscule, in the aggregate the pay out may be substantial. Payment for consumption of individual items may be matched by the evolving pattern of distributed production. The current trend
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
- Original Message - From: Bob McDaniel To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: February 11, 2000 6:58 PM Subject: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy [snip] In this way may evolve a rationale for paying people for consuming. This is where some similarity with the Tobin tax perhaps becomes most explicit. We may see emerge what some writers have already anticipated: micropayments on numerous purchases, i.e. payments based on bits of information. While individually miniscule, in the aggregate the pay out may be substantial. I think we should also be paid when we do the corporation's work for them--as in self-serve gas stations, wading through voice menus, and the soon-to-come automated supermarket checkout.
