Just Walk OutAmazon's new "Just Walk Out" technology at Whole Foods is another step toward a friction-free world. That's not a good thing.
By Carmel Richardson
March 5, 2022
In the dystopian world of 1984, a palm-reading screen that allows you to walk in and out of a grocery store without waiting in a checkout line is not one of its terrorizing features. Orwell, for all his insight, did not anticipate that a technocratic future would be driven less by visible, powerful censorship overlords than by the slow, steady enticements of that great gift of modernity: convenience.
In the Glover Park neighborhood of Northwest Washington, D.C., a recently reopened Whole Foods has drawn the attention of national media. Since Amazon purchased the grocery store chain in 2017, changes to Whole Foods stores were relatively minor—mostly just perks for Amazon Prime members. That is, until the Glover Park storefront, previously closed for four years due to a rat infestation, reopened last week, launching Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” technology for the first time in a regular grocery store.
Several of Amazon’s own storefronts already use Just Walk Out, but now you can, too, by either swiping the credit card connected with your Amazon account when you walk into the store, or using biometrics to connect the prints of both your hands to the same. After the initial setup, shoppers can buy groceries with as little resistance as unlocking an iPhone: tap palm, fill cart, walk out.
There’s still self-checkout available at Glover Park, in case you’re hesitant to scan your palm or fear looking like a shoplifter. After a week of being open only to Amazon customers, the store is now open to the public, so you presumably could still shop without signing in if you scan your own groceries. But reporters and Washington natives have remarked on some key differences in the store, most notably the role of employees. That is, there’s not much of one: employees monitor the entrance and help you sign in; they instruct you to replace any item you don’t want exactly where you found it; they still hang out behind the meat counter to make custom cuts; and they swoop in to stop you from taking a photo or video anywhere in the store.
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Putting aside the fact that probably no one will use this newfound time—what, 10 minutes, a couple of times a week?—to become an astrophysicist or run for president, removing all friction from our lives is not actually a good thing. We know instinctively that hundreds of cameras on the ceiling and a technology that knows you bought the organic avocado, not the regular one (even though it was in the wrong bin) is creepy. But we may be so conditioned to desire efficiency and avoid pain that it doesn’t occur to us that a life lived without any resistance is actually the greater evil.
One of my favorite activities on a Saturday morning is visiting a farmer’s market. Every one I’ve been to is different, from the giant produce hub in my hometown in Tennessee to the small collections of vendors in rural Michigan, the serious farmers of Northern Virginia, and the racks of clothes and jewelry at D.C.’s famous Eastern Market. Each has its own charm, but they all share the distinction of bringing people together, in person, to shop, barter, and bump up against one another in small spaces to sort out the wheat from the chaff. You likely won’t get all your groceries at one market, and almost certainly not from one stand. These markets invite friction. It’s sort of the point.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/just-walk-out/
