It's still early

What I  read

I hope I haven't stolen an article that interested someone else, but the story "Amazon opens a supermarket with no checkouts" on the BBC News hooked me. Who wouldn't want to learn about a future without supermarket checkout queues?

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What it says

In his story, Chris Johnson tells us that Amazon has opened Just Walk Out to the general public. This supermarket has no checkout staff at all, nor even self-checkout. It uses a lot of cameras and other technology to identify and track both shoppers, who scan themselves in with a smartphone app a bit like entering a BTS station, put their shopping directly into the bags that will carry it out, and then just walk out, at which time their Amazon account is automatically billed. 

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My response 

I'm still stuck in the days of traditional checkout. I visit Tops at Silom Complex almost every day for my grocery shopping, and although they have had self-checkout for several months now, I've never been brave enough to try it. It looks complicated, and I'm not sure that it saves any time. It certainly looks like more work for the shopper, so I continue to queue for a staff checkout, although I gave up using cash there years ago. I love the idea of just walking in and having a QR code on my phone scanned as I enter, grabbing what I want, and simply walking straight out when finished.

My next thought was a connection with Top's blog post a few days ago, "Do not let machines compete your work," where he discusses the implications for employment of the rise of ever smarter machines. The world is definitely moving in this direction: even without healthy business competition, as governments raise minimum wages, it becomes more and more attractive for businesses to replace humans with machines. And as Amazon's latest public venture shows, machines can do ever more things much better than humans, giving a far more satisfying customer experience. I can't remember the last time I queued up in a  bank or a bookstore, having moved all of my banking and book buying online years ago.

As the article says, quoting Amazon's chief financial officer, "it's still early." Who knows what wonders may come soon to a store near us? In the meantime, perhaps I should give the self-checkout at Tops a go.