Confession: Robots are taking over, and it's kind of convenient.
As I've posted many times, I live in the boonies, but those boonies happen to be one town over from the UConn campus (an agricultural school) in Eastern, CT. There is a small-ish Walmart nearby, which I have never and will never step foot in, and as in most rural communities it serves as the department store, grocery store, garden store, etc, for much of the area. There is not much else in the way of big boxes or major retail outlets. So I was kind of intrigued when Amazon opened a "store" on the UConn campus. It's about 25 miles closer to my home than going to the big nasty retail Mos Eisley outside of Hartford.
Anyway, I ordered a solid state hard drive from Amazon last night. When I checked out it informed me that I could pick it up in the morning at the UConn store, no shipping charges, no waiting for UPS. I got an email early this morning with a q-code in it saying my order was ready. I go to the Amazon "store," a rather sterile version of an old school Mail Boxes Etc -- just a wall of boxes, and some scanners. There is a cash register with a real person in case you can't figure out the hi-tech operation, but otherwise nothing. I scan the q-code on my phone and a door pops open and there is my package. Boom. Virtually no human interaction at all. I was in an out in less than one minute.
I'm glad I'm kinda old, because I don't know what people are going to do for work in the future. Maybe mop the floors of the Amazon store once winter comes and it gets messy.
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the auto industry execs who rode their gravy train to the very end, then got off just before as it went over the edge. They know there will have to be change, but not now, not by them, not when they're profiteering so well.
Oh, very interesting. Thanks for the report from the future. 
