A customer turns her key at a Keedoozle. (via Afflictor) Maslow’s motivational pyramid is but a house of cards if we don’t eat. And ever since we started shoving sustenance into our gullets, our species has devised means to do it faster—lest we beleaguer our journey to transcendence. In 2011, a team of archaeologists working near Kenya’s Lake Turkana unearthed several stone tools in sediment that was 3.3 million years old; they were the oldest ever found. From this starting point chiseled from stone, the parabolic arc of meal-gathering technology—arrowheads, taming wheat, spears, domesticating goats, irrigation, barcode scanners—has traced a path squarely through the turnstiles of Amazon Go.Amazon on Monday opened its first cashier-less convenience store in Seattle with the typical fanfare that accompanies just about everything Amazon does. After a 14-month internal trial, anyone with an Amazon Go account can now scan their smartphone at the door and go to town. Customers pick up any items they want and just walk out, all the while an array of sensors and cameras completes the transaction and tracks inventory. In keeping with trendy tech ritual, famished technomaniacs formed their customary, pre-dawn line outside, eagerly awaiting their chance to partake in hyper-efficient, faceless transactions. The irony wasn't lost on some:
I’m in Seattle and there is currently a line to shop at the grocery store whose entire premise is that you won’t have to wait in line. pic.twitter.com/fWr80A0ZPV
