Shopping Carts Go Wi-Fi

Posted by michael on Saturday October 18, 2003 @05:22AM from the cleanup-in-aisle-4 dept.

agentk writes "The Boston Globe reports today that area supermarket Stop & Shop is adding computers with Bluetooth barcode scanners, 802.11 networking and infrared positional sensors to shopping carts in one of its stores. 'The Shopping Buddy automatically displays which aisle you're in, what's on sale there, and what you bought the last time you strolled through.' Most Stop & Shop stores already have automated self-checkout lanes. Is this the future of shopping? What will the impact be on privacy, the cash economy, and the experience of shopping in general?"

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Human Contact by phritz · 2003-10-18 05:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

It occurred to me, as I was reading this article, that in the Shopping Experience of the Future(TM), we're moving increasingly towards a society where we don't have to interact with any other people. In this new model, you can go to the store and don't need to talk to a cashier or the nice man at the butcher counter.
Does anyone else agree? Thanks to amazon.com and stop & shop, I can now make all of my purchases without talking to another human being ... That seems significant, somehow, although I'm not exactly sure what it means ...