Amazon's same day delivery in SF is actually really amazing. I can order something and it shows up even before I have to leave work.

I haven't tried Echo yet but from what my friends tell me all they do is say "Hey Alexa order me ...."

VR/AR (augmented reality) will change retail within the next two decades.

The future will be that you can test any product you shop online as if it was right next to you in a AR/VR environment.

Not sure if those jeans you wanna buy online fit? No problem, try them on with your AR/VR world.

Depends on types of purchases. Many times I prefer the interpersonal "in-store" experience since there are some things that a computer just cant replicate. I think good, knowledgeable and friendly staff will many times overtake ecommerce except in instances where main priority is price or convenience. Question is how do you fulfill/replicate those other needs?

I tried this and it was awkward... I had to find someone to "release" the groceries for me. Once we found my order everything was reviewed in the shopping cart and the person (who from what it appeared like was hitting on me) was insisting on helping me bring it to my car which I had to refuse several times "Nah I'm good, no thanks I got it, its ok I'm good". But they're still perfecting it so I only see it getting better with time. I'm sure the delivery to your home feature is great.

For me I'd rather cruise down aisles stocked with product than mindlessly clicking through shit in front of a computer screen. The grocery store is directly on my drive home and I get my stuff immediately.

I save my mindlessly clicking through shit time for work and Revscene.

Wait until you have kids. That 1+hr you spend in the supermarket where you have to constantly put stuff your kids grab back and the goddamn evil candies by the cashier that make your kids cry if you don't let them have one, is... let's just say not a part I enjoy about parenthood. :pokerface:

Not to mention that the same shopping trip can be done within 20min if I was without kids.
As for walking the isle discovering stuff, VR would actually solve this problem. All that store browsing experience in the comfort of home in undies.

Least no more cunts asking me for donations and making me feel guilty.:noyoudidnt::noyoudidnt::noyoudidnt:

Your kids learn life experience and get socialized in these situations, they don't learn anything about society sitting at home while you online order everything.

Do I think we'll get there? Eventually, for sure. We pretty much HAVE to, IMO. If we get more Elon Musks in the world, we'll head towards my "utopian" Star Trek future. More Hilary Clintons though, and we'll be in Mad Max eventually :fuckthatshit: (or maybe The Matrix LUL )

The thing about a universal income is that rich people can still get fucking rich if they want. People will still "want things" and having guaranteed income doesn't necessarily mean everyone will just sit around playing call of duty and smoking weed all day. Only the ones that are already doing that, who don't give a shit about money one way or another.

I work for a major retail chain and, based on interactions over the years, I'm not sure this sort of application would work until there's a major shift in how consumers act. It may be a generation or a racial thing (or perhaps a mixture of both) but cash is still king for a lot of people. Hell, I still use cash myself for many purchases because my debit card wears out quickly and I have a habit of leaving my phone at home or the hotel.

Consumers also have a terrible habit of not putting products back where they found them. In Amazon's pilot store, I'm sure things work more or less fine. But it's not just kids who pick up random items, decide later they don't want them, and then drop them where ever they happen to be standing. Adults are notorious for this. Go into any store and I'm sure you'll find random shit dropped along the selves. This sort of system wont detect these kind of item drops and you can bet your ass there will be a million complaints about people being charged for items they didn't take home with them.

The biggest thing I have, though, is the cost of implementation. I currently run projects for my company (new store openings, relocations and renovations) and the budgets for those are already pretty tight. Anywhere from $500,000 for a small store renovation up to $5 Million for a full sized new store opening. These costs include major things like trades people, millwork, fixtures, temporary stocking crews, and the like. For a small boutique store, incorporating all of these new sensors and cameras to cover shelves is likely already going to be a major portion of an expense. Translating that into a large store with over 10,000 separate skus like the ones I normally deal with would be astronomical. And then converting that into the over 300 locations in Canada alone? Goodbye profits for the next decade.

Also, I encounter customers all over the place who still don't know how their chip card works, despite it being in wide use for many years now. I would have no hope at all for those people if companies started shifting into this sort of selling practice.

We will eventually get there but not if 99% of the wealth is owned by 2% or less of the population. Having a UBI in this state of affairs is as likely as "trickle down" economy or promising everyone will eventually live in a mansion in Malibu.

You talk about utopian Star Trek future.. but in their canon basically the period we are living in got wiped out (ST First Contact) before they came to the senses.. my money is that will have to happen first. In that case, having a few Elon Musks won't matter.

I think the point is they will learn socializing in some other manner.. school, after school programs, free range parenting etc.

The trend is for online shopping to increase. heck Amazon is complaining they can't find large enough warehouse in lower mainland for their facilities.. The size they want for 1 warehouse is more than double of what we have available.

10cm of snow friday...... uho h....


edit: wrong thread lol

shit is scary mang. lets look at this graph

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media...k67yiwlffl.png

alot of those bottom 50% earners have jobs that are easily automated so they'll be potentially be even poorer in the future.

can't help but think we're heading into a classic dystopian nightmarish future with just a huge underclass

I am curious to see how infrastructures have been rated over that same period and where the funding was coming from.

I think that's the #1 thing that drove me nuts about this last election cycle, coming from an IT background.

I haven't heard a single legitimate politician even speak about technology and its role in removing jobs in the near future. Technology is slowly going to remove more Service industry related jobs, next it will move to transportation (which I may add employs something like a third of Americans), eventually it will also move to us office folks in our jobs as well, it is inevitable.

What is our plan here? You hear some folks say "Oh ya, well people will be educated to service and fix the machines". Do you really think so? I doubt it. The education system is FAR too behind to educate the lower class for these types of jobs, and let's be real here, these automated machines will need a fraction of human bodies to service and keep them running anyways.

So what's our plan? I'm a big proponent of the guaranteed wage idea, but given how Socialism has become such a dirty word in America, I don't ever see that passing.

they were focused more about the pipelines and bringing back jobs to Alberta , seems like they were trying to fix what was broken, rather than advancing what is growing in the tech industry.

edit: meaning... they will get more votes talking about bringing jobs back etc etc.

You guys keep talking about "low class" or "entry level" jobs that are in danger, but legitimate occupations like Flight Engineer or even Web Designers are becoming obsolete. You don't need Flight Engineer to fly a 747 anymore, and people can just use WIX instead of hiring a web designer.

Same as in medical industry, I heard X-Ray Technician(or something?) is becoming obsolete due to improved technology.

As for the argument of how the numbers of jobs won't change because they will just hire maintenance technician for those automated machines, but there's no guarantee that maintenance technicians can't be automated too.

Have you guys seen the new show on Netflix call 3%. Seems like this might happen. The poor will stay on earth where they are to suffer/die of disease and basically barely surive. They have no luxury items IE cell phones, tablets, TVs, computers, cars.

The top 3% gets to live in utopia where they don't have to worry about life, there are no suffering no disease. But to make it there you have to be really smart or rich or have power.

Maybe this happen to us in the future? Poor are made to suffer and no chance to get out of the cycle while rich have everything. Since the army will all be robots control by the rich the poor will never win in war to take life better for them.

Not X Ray tech but Radiologists, ie MDs who specialise in looking / analyzing images for their colleagues.. that field / need just disappeared after 2005. X ray machines / MRI scanners are just getting simplier to use and no need for training.. also with apps like Watson who can see things better than humans can.

Depends on installation.. that's why the most "future proof" jobs are always clergy and plumbers because houses especially in Western world are still mostly custom. One of the places I often stay in Europe is 300+ years old... It has just been updated / redone every few decades. Robots for the foreseeable future needs to have their environment "defined" for them.

Here is an interesting read Open Letter from Terry Gou to Trump here. Terry Gou is the owner of Foxconn also Sharp.

CBC did an interesting review on automation:

i saw this video in facebook as a add yeah it looks cool but don know how long it will take to be in place

Someone agrees with me SeemsGood

https://www.geek.com/tech-science-3/...ncome-1701217/