"The Machine Stops" by E M Forster is a pretty remarkable science fiction story from around the same time period that the article begins, when people were worrying about over mechanization.
I'd think that in general, we as a civilization are moving closer to instant, on-demand gratification. It's not a trend that's necessarily bad, but it does raise the standards in terms of speed, ease of access, and quality of service.
The most obvious case is email. It started as an inbox and has turned into an extremely fine-grained, organized method. What started as a way to communicate has largely become "too slow" and now there's all sorts of AI to aid this: take Google's smart reply (on https://gmail.com), for example, or Aiko mail's "quick actions" and one click email management (on https://helloaiko.com). We're moving towards an age where it is largely becoming "too slow" to communicate with each other; people just want to press a button and have themselves expressed.
Even texting, which is largely regarded as one of the fastest ways to communicate (_instant_ messaging), suffers from this--it started with autocomplete and Quick Reply, and now Facebook is changing it up with Messenger smart replies (on https://messenger.com).
Again, it's not necessarily a bad trend. It's just one that raises standards pretty high.
>> It is no longer necessary to speak to be served. You step into a hotel, press the button, and a succulent luncheon appears suddenly before your delighted vision.
WTF? Where is this magic hotel? Is this luncheon being displayed as some sort of hologram? The day that a vending machine can produce a "succulent luncheon" is the day robots have taken over. Every recent attempt at robot cooks, even robot waiters, seems to have failed miserably.
Yesterday. I drove there in a car piloted by a human. I ordered by talking to a human. I handed cash to a human. My food was prepared by a human and handed to me by a human. For all the tech articles, little has changed since drive-throughs were invented back in the 50s.
Ritual has completely changed how I order food. I never wait in line, talk to the staff, or have to pay in person. You just show up when the app tells you it will be ready and grab the bag and go.
Everyone I know who started using it uses it nearly daily or multiple times a week. There's often 10+ bags waiting for Ritual users at any time at a hamburger place I frequent.
Not to mention Uber eats and other delivery services. Retail interaction for food is changing rapidly.
I had to add "food ordering" to "ritual" to get DDG or Google to tell me what you might be talking about. The landing page doesn't explain what it does, at all, above the fold. "Make friends with food" is the largest text and it appears this does something called "social ordering". Is that like group orders? Or catering? Or does it automatically post everything I order to my social media? "Make friends with food" plus the image on the page makes me think maybe it's some kind of food-related meet-up thing, like you take a slot at a table with other strangers who are also using the app so you're not alone at lunch.
Whatever it is, I can "order now". Scrolling reveals that yes, it appears it's just group orders and take-out. What a revolution.
>quite the handwave of a highly optimized system that contains a lot easier of automation.
In many restaurants a person throws a premade burger in a microwave and slaps it together. Before then countless machines, and far less humans than ever touched it before then.
not really. the day a robot can create new dish consistantly that has good and unique palate quality is the day they have taken over. this does not mean theyhave taken over apocalyptically but that they can really take over preaty much very endever we can do.
I realise this isn't the point of the article at all (although it is mentioned) but man, pushing a button is much better than touching a capacitive button. Forget the pain of replacing humans with buttons; when are real pushable buttons and turnable knobs coming back‽
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html