Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking and Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
Speaker 1: looks at the future and says, do you collect coins? Yeah,
Speaker 1: just in case vending machines become the dominant race. I'm
Speaker 1: John and Strickland, I'm Lauren Folk, and I'm George Day. Joe,
Speaker 1: come on, I'm sorry, don't play with my emotions that way.
Speaker 1: Who are you really okay? I'm Joe McCormick. Today we
Speaker 1: are going to do a listener request episode, and it's
Speaker 1: one of the weirder listener requests we've gotten. Actually, I
Speaker 1: don't know how weird it is. Maybe it's weird that
Speaker 1: it's so mundane. The request is, the request is normal.
Speaker 1: It was the listener who was weird. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: Wonderful listener Dan Dan Yeah, via email, he said, I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you guys about vending machines and the
Speaker 1: future possibilities. It went from an old coke machine to
Speaker 1: a t M S. I remember that tech Stuff episode
Speaker 1: and run and even vending machines that buy your electronics
Speaker 1: at the mall. I haven't remember seeing an article about
Speaker 1: marijuana vending machines. In Colorado would love to hear back
Speaker 1: from you guys. Dan. Well, thank you for that suggestion, Dan.
Speaker 1: And the more I thought about this, the more I
Speaker 1: actually did kind of want to talk about vending machines.
Speaker 1: Where we are now, what's the what's the cutting edge
Speaker 1: of of automated vending? And then the future because the
Speaker 1: main thing that immediately popped into my head was the
Speaker 1: role vending machines playing video games, where in video games,
Speaker 1: vending machines are a great place to get guns and
Speaker 1: ammunition and foods that magically healed traumatic wounds instantly, buff
Speaker 1: buffers that magically make you better at whatever particular thing
Speaker 1: you need to be better at that point of the game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so are are we trending towards that kind of future?
Speaker 1: Like the gu from a vending machine, it's a BioShock
Speaker 1: past an the retro future retro fee Um No, I
Speaker 1: don't think Yeah, I certainly hope not. But what is
Speaker 1: the future of vending? And before that, what is the
Speaker 1: past of vending machine? Now, I have to say I
Speaker 1: originally kind of scoffed at this idea, and I apologize
Speaker 1: for it because the more we thought about the more
Speaker 1: I was like, you know this is actually a much better,
Speaker 1: much better topic than I gave it credit for. So, Dan,
Speaker 1: you have my sincere apologies for the scoffing that you
Speaker 1: did not hear. But uh yeah, let's let's look back
Speaker 1: on the history of vending machines and it goes back
Speaker 1: to one of my favorite people in history. I have
Speaker 1: talked about this, dude, Edison. No not, just gotta go
Speaker 1: further back than that. Uh, let's see Ben Franklin. Did
Speaker 1: he create like a vending machine for turkey meat or something?
Speaker 1: Oddly enough? Yes, but no he did not. I I'm
Speaker 1: talking about someone else, someonepare I do love myself the bard?
Speaker 1: Let me tell you I could rattle off some of
Speaker 1: that Shakespeare right now. Is Hero of Alexandria Heron, also
Speaker 1: known you Heron. You guys know who Heron. I know
Speaker 1: Lauren knows who Haron is. Yeah. We were just talking
Speaker 1: about this dudea over the other day. Yeah. So, Heron
Speaker 1: of Alexandria is known for lots of different inventions, including
Speaker 1: early versions of the steam engine, devices used to open
Speaker 1: up temple doors as if by magic, it really was
Speaker 1: by steam. The guy was. The guy was pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Well around two b C. He got to inventing a
Speaker 1: water dispenser that was coin operated, supposedly for things like
Speaker 1: in Egypt, where you know, he might need some water
Speaker 1: after a nice long trip across the hot burning sands
Speaker 1: to pay for water that's barbaric. Well, no, that's civilized.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly civilized. So the way his dispenser worked was
Speaker 1: really pretty ingenious. So imagine, if you will, a cylinder.
Speaker 1: So you've got this big cylinder and you fill it
Speaker 1: up with water. Now, on the base of that cylinder,
Speaker 1: inside the cylinder, there's a little tube that projects up
Speaker 1: from the bottom a few inches and at the base
Speaker 1: of it is a hole that leads out. This is
Speaker 1: where you would, you know, stick your cup underneath that
Speaker 1: hole to dispense water. There's a plug or a stopper
Speaker 1: of some sort that covers that that hole normally, so
Speaker 1: water doesn't just immediately flow out of the cylinder, which
Speaker 1: would make it far less useful. Uh. This plug is
Speaker 1: attached by a chain or string of some sort to
Speaker 1: a lever, so when the lever is in the down
Speaker 1: position on the plug side, the plug is covering the hole.
Speaker 1: On the other side of the lever is a small
Speaker 1: platform which is positioned directly under a coin slot. So
Speaker 1: when you put a coin in the coin slot, the
Speaker 1: coin falls, hits the platform, lifts the lever up, which
Speaker 1: raises the plug, which allows water to flow through the hole,
Speaker 1: thus dispensing your liquid. And then once the coin slides
Speaker 1: off the platform, because you know the platform keeps tilting downward,
Speaker 1: the platform will raise back up to its normal position.
Speaker 1: The plug will come down and cover the whole again,
Speaker 1: so you won't end up losing all that precious water. Brilliant, Yeah,
Speaker 1: until somebody shows up with a few lead disks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they end up with a lot of water
Speaker 1: and blindness. So that taught them the so and so's.
Speaker 1: But there are other examples of ancient or at least
Speaker 1: very very old vending machines, or at least predecessors to them.
Speaker 1: Another example dates to ten seventy six Common era in China,
Speaker 1: when Chinese inventors created a device that would dispense pencils
Speaker 1: for money. Pencils, yeah that I read about this in
Speaker 1: several sources. However, I never saw any illustrations of what
Speaker 1: it looked like, so I don't know what mechanism used
Speaker 1: in order to do this, but there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are very convinced that it actually was
Speaker 1: a thing. So I will say this one is potentially
Speaker 1: apocryphal since I couldn't find definitive resources to show it.
Speaker 1: But it's cited lots of places, Okay, But this next
Speaker 1: one is definitely on the record. Yeah. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was another one that I was not sure about until
Speaker 1: Joe found the the an example of it and sent
Speaker 1: it to me, and I was like, oh, awesome, it
Speaker 1: really did exist. Uh. This would be in the eighteen
Speaker 1: centuries seventeen hundreds. Certain English taverns had what we're called
Speaker 1: honor boxes, also sometimes known as trust boxes. It's where
Speaker 1: you store your honor while you're at the tavern. You
Speaker 1: would think, but no, now the honor has no place
Speaker 1: in a tavern. No, that's not that's not true. Honor
Speaker 1: was in fact very important for this box. The way
Speaker 1: it worked was that you had a box that had
Speaker 1: a coin slot in it. You would put a an
Speaker 1: English penny in the coin slot for the English ones anyway,
Speaker 1: and this would activate a mechanism that would unlock the
Speaker 1: box so you can lift the top of the box. Right.
Speaker 1: The one I saw in the picture had like a button.
Speaker 1: So it seems like when you drop a coin into
Speaker 1: the slot, it allowed you to press a button that
Speaker 1: would pop the lid open, and that that would give
Speaker 1: you access to the contents inside the box, which happened
Speaker 1: to be tobacco, loose tobacco usually for a pipe. Right,
Speaker 1: And the honor part came in because you were trusted
Speaker 1: upon being able to access the contents of the box
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't take the entire contents of the box,
Speaker 1: but rather a single serving of tobacco. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like those like a newspaper dispensers system. Right, Boy, did
Speaker 1: I make out like a Bandit? Absolutely just armfuls of newspapers,
Speaker 1: except I always did the free weekly one, so I
Speaker 1: don't know that that anyway. Alright, So the concept of
Speaker 1: the modern vending creative creative loafing circulation is my house.
Speaker 1: The concept of modern vedding machines really dates to the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century late nineteenth century Victorian era of in London, England, really,
Speaker 1: and there are a couple of different examples that the
Speaker 1: earliest one, or at least the mentioned. I kept finding
Speaker 1: sites that said the earliest vending machine of this era
Speaker 1: was for postcards in London that you would use some
Speaker 1: coins to get a postcard from it. But there was
Speaker 1: also a shopkeeper, a bookshop owner named Richard Carlyle, who
Speaker 1: created a vending machine that sold books, and soon you
Speaker 1: had ones that would sell food you could put you know,
Speaker 1: the people who own the vending machine would put food
Speaker 1: in it, and business people who are really on their
Speaker 1: way to work doing important business things who don't have
Speaker 1: time to pop into a pub for a pint or
Speaker 1: three would end up putting some money in one of
Speaker 1: these pull out some foods they can eat on the
Speaker 1: run um. And meanwhile, if you look over at the
Speaker 1: United States that around the same time there were also
Speaker 1: inventions that fell into the vending machine category, including one
Speaker 1: from the Adams Gum Company. They built chewing gum vending
Speaker 1: machines that would dispense two dy fruity gum for the
Speaker 1: princely sum of one pinning. Unfortunately it was already chewed.
Speaker 1: It was not already chewed. By eighteen ninety, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Patent Office would begin granting patents for vending machines as
Speaker 1: off to the races at that point, and obviously, vending
Speaker 1: machines have been used for lots of different things. I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember as a kid going to restaurants and seeing
Speaker 1: lots of cigarette vending machines, the old like the old
Speaker 1: kind where you put in coins and pull a handle
Speaker 1: and then the carton of cigarettes, well pack of cigarettes
Speaker 1: that carton would pop out. Yeah. Yeah, they're still in
Speaker 1: use in some states in the United States in businesses
Speaker 1: that are twenty one and up I believe, or at
Speaker 1: least eight. That would make sense, Yeah, that would make sense.
Speaker 1: So it used to be that you could find them
Speaker 1: all over the darn place, because I remember as a
Speaker 1: child running across them all the time. I also had
Speaker 1: them in red lobster and stuff. Oh yeah, sure. My
Speaker 1: personal favorite was vending machines because I am Georgia boy.
Speaker 1: We're the old old coke glass bottle vending machines have
Speaker 1: a have a little it's almost like a fridge door.
Speaker 1: You would put a coin in, it would unlatch the
Speaker 1: fridge door, and then you could pull the bottle of
Speaker 1: coke out from one of the little dispensary units, and
Speaker 1: then you would drink your coke and then return the
Speaker 1: bottle for a small deposit. And that was my childhood
Speaker 1: summed up right there. In that experience. Um, I always
Speaker 1: liked all the little rubber bouncy ball vending machines, like
Speaker 1: the quarter vending machines at a publix or whatever. And
Speaker 1: now they have the ones where it's like the gumballs
Speaker 1: or whatever. They have the long almost like cork screw
Speaker 1: slide things. So not only only is it did did
Speaker 1: you get some gum? You get to watch it roll
Speaker 1: down this kind of almost Rube Goldberg like pathway. You know,
Speaker 1: the cork screws that I remember, the ones you've probably
Speaker 1: seen in most of the like you know, food candy
Speaker 1: bar kind of machines have chips and all that stuff
Speaker 1: in them where they've got the cork screw that unwinds
Speaker 1: to drop your thing and just enough hypothetically to drop
Speaker 1: a single product and advance the ones behind it up
Speaker 1: to dropping position for the next person, right, unless something
Speaker 1: is slightly off and then nothing drops out or more
Speaker 1: than one thing drops out, in which case Jack. But now,
Speaker 1: also going back to the history of vending machines, there
Speaker 1: were entire restaurants that used vending machines as automats. I've
Speaker 1: been to those. Have you either of you been to
Speaker 1: an automatic? Yeah? Yeah, they're them in movies, really novel
Speaker 1: and not very cool. They're not very practice sandwiches, like
Speaker 1: because obviously you know it's it's food that's been prepared
Speaker 1: well ahead of time. Obviously, you know you wanna you
Speaker 1: want to pick your battles. I would not go for
Speaker 1: an egg sil at sandwich and an automat for example. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they are refrigerated, yeah, but still or slightly
Speaker 1: heated maybe, depending on the one. Usually the ones I
Speaker 1: encountered were normally um sandwiches, so they were just kind
Speaker 1: of refrigerated and slices of pie. I specifically remember hospitals.
Speaker 1: A lot of hospitals in Georgia had automats for their cafeterias.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I remember seeing a lot of this
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. Yeah. And if you have
Speaker 1: not seen an example of an automat, this is a
Speaker 1: thing where it's sort of like a like a wall
Speaker 1: of little cubbies of food and you put a coin
Speaker 1: into a machine and either you know, select a series
Speaker 1: of buttons the way that you would on a dropity
Speaker 1: food vending machine that Joe is just talking about. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's a word for that that's better than dropity food. Um,
Speaker 1: but we'll call it a gravity Well, it's a it's
Speaker 1: an arm trap where you're like, I'm going to get
Speaker 1: that snickers, whether whether this machine wants me to or not,
Speaker 1: or you would drop a coin into a specific cubby
Speaker 1: slot and then it allows you to releases a mechanism
Speaker 1: that allows you to open the door and take your
Speaker 1: your sandwicher, can of soda or pie, your ideally delicious food. Yes,
Speaker 1: in practice, maybe not so much so. Those are actually
Speaker 1: kind of died out mostly in the in the nineteen eighties. Um,
Speaker 1: they haven't. There's still places where you can find and
Speaker 1: sometimes they're kitchy kind of uh popular spots because of
Speaker 1: the novelty factor. Sure well, and that that nostalgia factor
Speaker 1: of them being from the fifties or sixties. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: what's going on with vending machines today? Is there really
Speaker 1: anything to say about them on the technological front as
Speaker 1: they stand? There's tons of stuff to say about them, actually,
Speaker 1: and some of them some of it's technological and some
Speaker 1: of it's more of a policy issue. For example, on
Speaker 1: the policy side, in the United States, the FDA has
Speaker 1: ruled that vending machine operators will have to provide a
Speaker 1: sticker or placard detailing the calorie count of food items
Speaker 1: sold within vending machines. Clearly, that only applies to vending
Speaker 1: machines that sell food. If you're talking about the vending
Speaker 1: machines at your airport that sell like electronics contains ninety
Speaker 1: two calories, and well, if you're going to eat it,
Speaker 1: you should know. I like, I like the way you think.
Speaker 1: But there have been critics who said, hey, this is
Speaker 1: putting in an unnecessary uh burden upon the people the
Speaker 1: companies that own the vending machines because they have to
Speaker 1: spend the money to sticker. Although we are also seeing
Speaker 1: new smart vending machines which don't even have necessarily a
Speaker 1: window for you to see the products. It may have
Speaker 1: a screen and interactive screen that shows you what products
Speaker 1: are inside of it, and that same screen could show
Speaker 1: things like nutritional information without having any additional placards or
Speaker 1: stickers necessary. I generally think that adding the nutritional information
Speaker 1: to in a way that's easily accessible by the consumer
Speaker 1: is terrific in all cases. All the time. I think
Speaker 1: so too. I would like to I would like to
Speaker 1: at least have that moment of regret before I put
Speaker 1: my money in and choose the thing. I'll still do it,
Speaker 1: but at least I have the moment of regret um.
Speaker 1: So another feature with smart vending machines. They are quite
Speaker 1: a few, actually, and we'll talk about some of the
Speaker 1: the the kind of on the brink ones a little bit.
Speaker 1: But one of them is that you usually have connectivity
Speaker 1: to a home base. So, in other words, the smart
Speaker 1: vending machine is connected back to whatever company is in
Speaker 1: charge of that vending machine. And that way, whenever a
Speaker 1: particular item starts running low, it alerts the company. It
Speaker 1: goes through the WiFi or cellular or whatever whatever it is,
Speaker 1: right right, it sends a message back and says, guys,
Speaker 1: we're running really low on moonpies. We need moonpie stats. Yes,
Speaker 1: critical moonpie situation. R c cola machine next to us
Speaker 1: is laughing at us if we do not get more
Speaker 1: moonpies and uh. And so then you would have someone
Speaker 1: come out and bring moonpies and and replenish the machine. Now,
Speaker 1: in the old days, the way this worked was that
Speaker 1: you would just have a technician, like someone who actually
Speaker 1: stocks these things, come out you know, once every so often, right,
Speaker 1: and then they would look at the machine and then
Speaker 1: restock it based upon what was already you know, depleted.
Speaker 1: But this way you could one meet and priest demand
Speaker 1: whenever there was increased demand, and to not send anyone
Speaker 1: out if for some reason traffic had slowed down. So
Speaker 1: let's say, for example, the vending machine is at a
Speaker 1: college campus and you're talking about the summer session. It's
Speaker 1: probably gonna have a lot lower traffic than it would
Speaker 1: through the rest of the year and fewer people drinking.
Speaker 1: You who, right, So therefore you don't need to have
Speaker 1: someone go out as frequently, And this way you would
Speaker 1: actually know when you needed to send someone out, and
Speaker 1: you could you could uh be more efficient. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you had only scheduled a technician to
Speaker 1: come out once every three weeks instead of once every
Speaker 1: two weeks in those situations. But then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there was a big football game or something, and yeah,
Speaker 1: the moon pies. I don't know why that would happened
Speaker 1: in the summer, but neither but hey, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know how the summer football games. Maybe it's a
Speaker 1: big football practice and everyone wanted to go in there rest.
Speaker 1: But the other one is that if the machine breaks down,
Speaker 1: it could end up sending a signal, or the lack
Speaker 1: of signal could be an alert to the home base
Speaker 1: to say, all right, we need to send someone out
Speaker 1: there to look at this and to service it so
Speaker 1: that it comes back online. I wonder if there's a
Speaker 1: special function for like a kid got his arm stuck
Speaker 1: in the machine. Again, maybe maybe it could even be that,
Speaker 1: like the it just says that the trap door has
Speaker 1: been opened and an ordinately long amount of time, you
Speaker 1: may want to send somebody to check it out. But again,
Speaker 1: the cool thing about this is that they can send
Speaker 1: someone right away. You reduce the downtime of that vending machine,
Speaker 1: which is a benefit for everybody, the people who frequent
Speaker 1: the vending machine and the company that services it, plus
Speaker 1: all the products that are actually being shown in that one. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it means that you have the least amount
Speaker 1: of downtime possible ideally, So that's one thing that's happening
Speaker 1: right now. Of course, you've got credit cards, which for
Speaker 1: the longest time, vending machines did not, except right, you
Speaker 1: had to have coins or dollars. Man, do you have
Speaker 1: any quarters? Yeah? And that boy, especially as especially if
Speaker 1: you all you had were really wrinkly bills and the
Speaker 1: bill accept or was not taking them, Like you're cramming
Speaker 1: the bill into the into the machine and it's just
Speaker 1: not taking it. How many times have we been there?
Speaker 1: Many many times in my case. So we're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot more machines now that do accept credit cards, although
Speaker 1: even that is almost an outdated technology at this point,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're outside the United States and you're using
Speaker 1: something like a chip and pin system everywhere else. Right,
Speaker 1: So there, we really got to be talking about near
Speaker 1: field communication. Yeah. Yeah, near field communication is becoming a
Speaker 1: new kind of standard that we're starting to see on
Speaker 1: a lot of vending machines that are being produced today.
Speaker 1: And NFC technology is one that's similar to other wireless
Speaker 1: radio transmissions. In this case, it's one that takes place
Speaker 1: over a very short distance, so you have to be
Speaker 1: very close to whatever you're communicating with in order for
Speaker 1: this to happen. That's why you see like devices that
Speaker 1: are allowed to share contact information, you put the two
Speaker 1: phones right up next to each other. That's why, because
Speaker 1: the communication distance is only effective at a very short range.
Speaker 1: But you can have like an online wallet sort of
Speaker 1: situation like Google wallet or the the I pay the
Speaker 1: Apple version or one of a thousand other ones that
Speaker 1: is on your phone in some sort of app, and
Speaker 1: assuming that the vending machine can accept that, you would
Speaker 1: hold your phone up and do your purchase through your phone,
Speaker 1: never having to actually pull out any kind of cash
Speaker 1: or credit card in order to complete that transaction. So
Speaker 1: we're starting to see that in newer vending machines um,
Speaker 1: which is great because for the longest time, NFC technology,
Speaker 1: particularly in the US, was one of those things we
Speaker 1: talked about a lot, but didn't really see them frequently,
Speaker 1: and it's starting to finally change, which is kind of cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's some other ones that have interesting features to them,
Speaker 1: like the eat Wave. What eat wave? It is a
Speaker 1: vending machine SENE that can have both refrigerated items and
Speaker 1: microwavable items in the same vending machine, and for your
Speaker 1: microwavable goods, it will microwave them for you and then
Speaker 1: dispense them for you, so you would pick your thing.
Speaker 1: Let's say you want a nice hot apple turnover and
Speaker 1: also known as the skald Er. Yeah, obviously you want
Speaker 1: this to be really precise and and not to overheat
Speaker 1: things to the point where you're going to uh, suffer
Speaker 1: in a fate like the bad guys and raiders have
Speaker 1: lost arc at the end of your face just melts
Speaker 1: off as you take a bite out of your apple turnover. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it has a microwave incorporated into the vending machine,
Speaker 1: and it quote unquote knows which items are which, So
Speaker 1: your cold items are delivered cold, your microwave items are
Speaker 1: are either defrosted or heated up whatever it needs to
Speaker 1: happen so that you can consume them right there in
Speaker 1: the machine before it dispenses it to you, which is
Speaker 1: pretty neat. That's kind of cool. Yeah, does it do
Speaker 1: hot pockets, because I'm sure that's question Ben Bowland would
Speaker 1: want answer. I'm sure it could. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that you commonly find. I
Speaker 1: have never personally set eyes upon an eat wave machine.
Speaker 1: I've only read about them and dreamed kind of like
Speaker 1: a uh wester roast. Those are the two things I
Speaker 1: dream about, is the wester Ross and eat waves. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, even when you're standing there in front of
Speaker 1: the vending machine, you have to think in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind winter is coming. And even when you're
Speaker 1: writing a dragon you have to think where's my hot pop?
Speaker 1: That's right, I mean it goes both ways, so I'm
Speaker 1: sure George R. R. Martin will get on that in
Speaker 1: the next novel anyway, one of the other elements. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, now I want to hear a full version
Speaker 1: of the Game of Thrones theme with all those all
Speaker 1: the notes just replaced by someone singing hot pockets. At
Speaker 1: any rate. You may have also heard some stories back
Speaker 1: in December about the amazing vending machines in the future
Speaker 1: that use facial recognition software and hardware. Except here's the thing.
Speaker 1: All of the articles I was reading was like, it's
Speaker 1: the first vitting machine to use that, and I said,
Speaker 1: shenanigans because I specifically remember covering this for tech stuff,
Speaker 1: the fact that facial recognition hardware has been a part
Speaker 1: of vending machines in certain parts of the world for
Speaker 1: several years. You know, I basically almost never say something
Speaker 1: was the first of something, because every time somebody says
Speaker 1: something like that, they turned out to be wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then that's the call for shenanigans, and then the second
Speaker 1: for shenanigans, and then we all grab our rooms. Uh So,
Speaker 1: back in two thousand eight, there was a Japanese company
Speaker 1: that introduced some vending machines that had facial recognition hardware
Speaker 1: and software for age verification, specifically to vend cigarettes. The
Speaker 1: age in Japan for the legal purchase of cigarettes is twenty.
Speaker 1: So what they did was they built this facial recognition
Speaker 1: hardware into the vending machines that, in theory, would look
Speaker 1: at a person's face and look for features that you
Speaker 1: would expect in someone who is over the age of
Speaker 1: twenty and who smokes so wrinkles, some sagging flesh. I'm
Speaker 1: not making this up. It was really looking for things
Speaker 1: that we're not associated with a young looking face, and
Speaker 1: if the face were to match, then that would be
Speaker 1: an indicator that, yes, this person is allowed to buy cigarettes.
Speaker 1: I mean, could you just kind of hold up a potato, No,
Speaker 1: but you could hold up a photo. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was a there was a reporter. Was this the photo
Speaker 1: of Bruce Willis that fooled the machine? It's one of
Speaker 1: the photos they used was of Bruce Willis. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the only one, however, there was a reporter with song
Speaker 1: K Sports that went around and looked at various vending
Speaker 1: machines in different cities in Japan, trying different types of photographs.
Speaker 1: One was of I think, there was one that was
Speaker 1: a man in his fifties. There was another one there's
Speaker 1: a woman in her thirties. And depending upon the size
Speaker 1: of the photo, it seemed to work pretty well. Like
Speaker 1: if you're if your photo was too small, it would
Speaker 1: no longer work them, it wouldn't full the machine. But
Speaker 1: the photo was of a large enough size, and we're
Speaker 1: just talking about a few inches where you can hold
Speaker 1: it up to the camera at a appropriate distance. Although
Speaker 1: it should be said that this was not the only
Speaker 1: method of age verification that the machines were using, right uh.
Speaker 1: Cigarette machines in general in Japan tend to have another
Speaker 1: form of age verification. You have to have something called
Speaker 1: a taskbo card. Taskbo, by the way, it stands for
Speaker 1: tobacco passport. It's a it's a I'm going to cancer country.
Speaker 1: It's flavor country. It's flavor country. It really is terrible anyway.
Speaker 1: Taskbo cards are an age verification cards where you've you've
Speaker 1: had to apply for it and prove your age and
Speaker 1: then you get the card as an r F I
Speaker 1: D chip inside of it. So that way you would
Speaker 1: use that tap that while uh, while purchase, making your
Speaker 1: purchase to prove that you are in fact of the
Speaker 1: age that is allowed to purchase cigarettes legally. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would probably need one of those as well as
Speaker 1: the the picture of Bruce Willis for you to order
Speaker 1: your your um illicit cigarettes when you are a young Um,
Speaker 1: don't smoke kids, so but really you're one stop shop
Speaker 1: for this would be stealing Bruce Willis's passport or just
Speaker 1: stealing Bruce Willis. It's not don't if you're not going
Speaker 1: to smoke. Also, just don't kidnap Bruce Willis guys. But
Speaker 1: if you are going to smoke, you might as well
Speaker 1: kill I see, I see your point. Now that's perfect logic.
Speaker 1: I think it's just think everything about that was wrong.
Speaker 1: We can move on. There were there were more of
Speaker 1: these though. Yeah. There was another story about Japanese vending
Speaker 1: machines that could detect gender and age range based on
Speaker 1: face recognition hardware and software. And these were beverage machines
Speaker 1: so not not cigarette machines. So why would you want
Speaker 1: to detect someone's gender and age? Well, these machines would
Speaker 1: give recommendations of what drinks a person might like based
Speaker 1: upon their demographics. That sounds totally offensive, It does, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they said that their market research showed that
Speaker 1: young men liked sweeter drinks than middle aged men, for example,
Speaker 1: so the drinks that it would suggest would be moral
Speaker 1: on the lines of the sweet drinks that their their
Speaker 1: market research has shown women tend to prefer. Now, you
Speaker 1: could choose anything, you weren't forced into whatever was suggested
Speaker 1: for you, and those suggestions would also change depending upon
Speaker 1: things like how late in the day it was it
Speaker 1: and what was the temperature outside, so something like if
Speaker 1: it was a hotter day, it might uh, it might
Speaker 1: suggest a more quote unquote refreshing beverage um that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, so the lemonade instead of you who okay now.
Speaker 1: According to a spokesperson for the J. R. East Water
Speaker 1: Business Company, the new machines saw three times as much
Speaker 1: traffic as their older machines that did not have this software.
Speaker 1: It could not make these recommendations. I'm sure the novelty
Speaker 1: factor was it was probably part of it. May have
Speaker 1: even been that people started to discover beverages they never
Speaker 1: tried before and really enjoyed them, and then didn't nowhere
Speaker 1: else to get them at the were hooked to the system. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fourteen, that's when we saw a lot more stories
Speaker 1: about vending machines with facial recognition capabilities. And this was
Speaker 1: when the technology was kind of breaking out of Japanese
Speaker 1: vending machines and making its way into ones in the
Speaker 1: in the United States, United Kingdom, places like that. And
Speaker 1: of course it was being reported like it was all
Speaker 1: brand new in the first time ever anyone did it ever?
Speaker 1: Trust me, if we're talking about technology, you want to
Speaker 1: look to Japan before you make that statement. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: these machines can market to you based upon your appearance,
Speaker 1: very similar to the one we just talked about in
Speaker 1: twenty ten in Japan. But beyond that, if you frequent
Speaker 1: a particular machine, you could end up being recognized by
Speaker 1: that machine actually has facial recognition software. Oh so it's like, oh, hey, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I see your back. Yeah, and I know that you
Speaker 1: have a habit of buying this particular drink, So would
Speaker 1: you do you want that again? Here's just your one
Speaker 1: stop shop. You just push this little button, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get exactly what you want. Also, users who frequently ordered
Speaker 1: the Strength also frequently ordered this drink also by nine
Speaker 1: in your tenth ones free right exactly. You can get
Speaker 1: loyalty programs. A lot of this is leveraging stuff that
Speaker 1: has been proven to work in other areas. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the you might also like very similar to Amazon right,
Speaker 1: and the loyalty programs are just like everything. Like, if
Speaker 1: you've ever gone to any coffee shop, there's probably a
Speaker 1: loyalty program there. Uh, and lots of other retail establishments
Speaker 1: use that same sort of model. So why not vending
Speaker 1: machines And this is one of the things that that
Speaker 1: the facial recognition hardware might allow people to do. You
Speaker 1: might think it's a little creepy that the machine knows
Speaker 1: who you are and what you like, but on the
Speaker 1: flip side, it may mean that you don't have to
Speaker 1: surf through you know, twenty other choices that are not
Speaker 1: valid to your your needs and you just get immediately
Speaker 1: what you want when you want it. So it all
Speaker 1: depends on your perspective. You know, I don't know how
Speaker 1: much there is to this, but I at least saw
Speaker 1: some sensational looking headlines about future vending machines that will
Speaker 1: be designed to food shame you. Yeah. Yeah, there's actually
Speaker 1: I've seen some stuff too that I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was based upon any specific reports or if it
Speaker 1: was just sort of a conjecture, well, experiment, that's a
Speaker 1: generous way. Well, if these machines recognize you, then they
Speaker 1: can keep databases of information about you and your family members,
Speaker 1: and and they can recommend products to your really chubby
Speaker 1: but and maybe they look at you and say you
Speaker 1: don't look like you need a Snickers, or or say like, like,
Speaker 1: you look like you've given up, let me give you two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm about to say, I don't think there's ever gonna
Speaker 1: be a machine that's gonna say like, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to sell anything to you. It's kind of empathetical
Speaker 1: to the whole purpose that now I might say, you
Speaker 1: don't really want that thing, you want this other thing
Speaker 1: that would be better for you. It also happens to
Speaker 1: be twice as expensive that I could totally see. But
Speaker 1: there's also some concerns that it could be hooked into
Speaker 1: things like medical records. So let's say that you are
Speaker 1: someone who has diabetes and you come up to the machine.
Speaker 1: The machine will not show you anything that could potentially
Speaker 1: cause you harm. On the one hand, that sounds like
Speaker 1: it's a responsible thing. On the other hand, anytime you
Speaker 1: have any sort of point of contact that has access
Speaker 1: to things like medical records, that's a potential vulnerability and
Speaker 1: a huge security concern. Yeah. No. Also, I mean I
Speaker 1: bulk at the very idea that that in this our
Speaker 1: free society, we are not allowed to kill ourselves slowly
Speaker 1: with the things that we can see. Well, maybe it
Speaker 1: would be something like Lauren. You would walk up to
Speaker 1: it, it it would say, Laura, no, you don't really want
Speaker 1: that particular treat because that's going to make you stabby, stabby,
Speaker 1: So let's have this other treat that's gonna make you
Speaker 1: happy happy. I don't know. It might be like Lauren, warning,
Speaker 1: this has lots of peppers in it. Well, that would
Speaker 1: be a good one. I would totally take that kind
Speaker 1: of warning, like, hey, yeah, it could be something like
Speaker 1: allergies as well. I mean, that's that's a total possibility.
Speaker 1: But you know what I would prefer is when you
Speaker 1: walk up to it, if you were making a profile,
Speaker 1: for example, you might say, oh, I'm allergic to peanuts
Speaker 1: for example. Then then it could avoid from that moment
Speaker 1: on with facial recognition saying oh, this person happens to
Speaker 1: allergic to peanuts. There's no connecting to any kind of
Speaker 1: medical database in that sense. You've just set up a
Speaker 1: profile with preferences and things that you should not have. Granted,
Speaker 1: if you're allergic to peanuts, you probably don't want to
Speaker 1: get something from a vending machine that has a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that has peanuts in it. Anyway, you can
Speaker 1: try the new Snickers that has salt cod instead of peanuts,
Speaker 1: the Ludfisk stickers. This also sounds like the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that I would I would just go up to
Speaker 1: with like pictures of all of my friends and teach
Speaker 1: the machine like this person only likes salt card. Them
Speaker 1: likes the super sour gummy worms. That's all. That's the
Speaker 1: only thing they ever want. Well, let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: some some of the weird and extravagant vending machines I
Speaker 1: came across while doing research on this topic. You know,
Speaker 1: I saw these notes you wrote Jonathan, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: obviously Jonathan has been had by some people pulling April
Speaker 1: Fools pranks. No, I did extensive research that makes certain
Speaker 1: these things really did app Yeah, so let's say that
Speaker 1: you are you know, you're a mover and or a shaker,
Speaker 1: and uh, you are one of the hot people. And
Speaker 1: of course you're living in Beverly Hills, because where else
Speaker 1: would you live? And there you decide, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm in the mall and I really want some caviar.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna walk up to this vending machine
Speaker 1: that sells caviare at s Cargo and plunk in about
Speaker 1: five bucks for some caviar. The beluga caviare sells for
Speaker 1: five ounce. You can buy an ounce of beluga caviar
Speaker 1: for five dollars at one of these vending machines. You know,
Speaker 1: knock yourself out. And also, in case you're worried about
Speaker 1: looking ghosh eating your caviar with a plastic spoon from
Speaker 1: the food court, you can also buy a mother of
Speaker 1: Pearl spoon to go with that, so that way, you know, well,
Speaker 1: that's good, I'm glad, I'm relieved. So you actually keep
Speaker 1: the spoon or do you just like put a deposit
Speaker 1: on I think I think, well you can either keep
Speaker 1: it or you just toss it to the side. Because
Speaker 1: everything in your life is disposable, so um, then obviously
Speaker 1: you would probably use some sort of crack card or
Speaker 1: NFC device, because I don't think anyone wants to sit
Speaker 1: there feeding five one dollar bills and I gotta get
Speaker 1: that caveat four hours later. Oh, it's gonna be so good.
Speaker 1: So there are vending machines in China that sell live
Speaker 1: crabs a life crabs. You know, I thought the life
Speaker 1: crab must be some special kind of device and chose
Speaker 1: not to correct. I am so happy that not only
Speaker 1: did you choose not to correct it, but I chose
Speaker 1: to go ahead and call it out anyway. It should
Speaker 1: be live crabs in our notes, not life life crabs. No,
Speaker 1: but live crabs almost as interesting as life crabs. If
Speaker 1: there was a machine that just said life crabs in
Speaker 1: that just to see what happens. I'm kind of with
Speaker 1: you on that one, Joe. In this case, they are
Speaker 1: crabs that are alive, and but the the vending machine
Speaker 1: itself is chilled so that they are, you know, dormant.
Speaker 1: But which is good because I'm not sure. Yeah, having
Speaker 1: a live and active crab dispensed out of a vending machine,
Speaker 1: while entertaining, would probably not have the results you were
Speaker 1: hoping for. And obviously you would use this to buy
Speaker 1: a crab and then take an omen and eat it.
Speaker 1: Oh man, what a horror when the crab machine breaks down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you could always go to the lobster machine. And
Speaker 1: I'm not making that up either. There was actually, at
Speaker 1: first I thought was only a single restaurant in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: but apparently at some point or another there were about
Speaker 1: eight of these machines along the Vegas Strip and in
Speaker 1: Fremont as well. And they are serious a lobster machine.
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely serious. Yeah, as it. You know those crap
Speaker 1: those claw games that you see in the arcades where
Speaker 1: they have like the stuffed animals and stuff. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's one of those, except it has live lobsters, main
Speaker 1: lobsters in it. It's a saltwater tank with a claw
Speaker 1: at the top and a joystick that controls the claw.
Speaker 1: You put two bucks in, you maneuver the claw, you
Speaker 1: push the button, the claw goes down if it grabs
Speaker 1: a lobster and places it in the bucket. Typically they
Speaker 1: would take a picture of you with the lobster and
Speaker 1: then cook it up for you for free, for free. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this particular restaurant I was looking at they did that
Speaker 1: for free, Like, so your lobster meal would cost two bucks.
Speaker 1: On the first truck crane games, they pick up a
Speaker 1: stuffed animal. How could they pick up The very first
Speaker 1: time I ever played a crane game, I won a
Speaker 1: stuffed animal the very first time. How many times have
Speaker 1: I won something since then? Zero? I used to go
Speaker 1: to a laundromat that had a crane game full of knives.
Speaker 1: That's almost as good as the lobsters. I I want
Speaker 1: to put in that, like, I'm offended on a humanity
Speaker 1: level that that there are claw games with live animals
Speaker 1: in them. I'm not I'm not even that touchy feely
Speaker 1: a lobster. It's a cockroach that lives underwater. I am
Speaker 1: aware of that. I'm just saying like, that's like I
Speaker 1: am not like a member of Peter or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I left out the machine and include that one. But no,
Speaker 1: I'm just there was not a puppy ending. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about something else about pizza. So the let's pizza veending machines.
Speaker 1: These took off in Italy and also I believe you
Speaker 1: can find them in the UK. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they're ay in the United States, but these are vending
Speaker 1: machines that make a pizza for you to order when
Speaker 1: you order it, so there's not like a bunch of
Speaker 1: cheese pizzas that just get heated up and then serve
Speaker 1: to you. Instead, when you put your money in and
Speaker 1: you make your selection, let's say you want a pepperoni pizza,
Speaker 1: then it'll will go ahead and mix flour and water
Speaker 1: together to make dough. It'll need that dough, it'll roll,
Speaker 1: roll the dough out, put the sauce, the cheese, the
Speaker 1: pepperoni on your pizza, cook it with an infrared oven,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing. The whole process supposedly takes about
Speaker 1: three minutes from start to finish, and then you get
Speaker 1: your own like made to order pepperoni pizza. I have
Speaker 1: no idea if it's any good, but when I looked
Speaker 1: at that, I was like, I kind of want to
Speaker 1: try one, just to just to kind of experience it
Speaker 1: and see if is this How does it stack up
Speaker 1: to the three D printed pizza? Yeah? Really that's the
Speaker 1: real question. Yeah, obviously there is a taste test that
Speaker 1: is in need, and I think for thinking is up
Speaker 1: to the task. Um. And then they're also French fry
Speaker 1: vending machines to go with your pizza. This was one
Speaker 1: of those things that when I heard about him, like,
Speaker 1: please tell me that it fries the fries right then
Speaker 1: and there, because I can't stand the thought of just
Speaker 1: stale French fries. Yeah, nothing worse than French. That's pretty awful.
Speaker 1: So in case, these are actually frozen fries that are
Speaker 1: flash fried when you put in your money. I supposedly
Speaker 1: these are vending machines that you can find in Australia.
Speaker 1: So you put your money in flash fries, the fries
Speaker 1: serves them up to you in a little little container
Speaker 1: and you can take your fries and munch them on
Speaker 1: the way home. And I decided to end this list.
Speaker 1: There's tons of stuff we can talk about. I mean,
Speaker 1: just just to panel alone. Oh sure, sure, well, I
Speaker 1: mean even here in Atlanta there's a cupcake vending machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, there there are a couple of different cupcake
Speaker 1: vending machines that I came across when I was looking,
Speaker 1: and they even can put sprinkles on them. But the
Speaker 1: one I was looking at the in Paris you can
Speaker 1: buy baguettes from vending machines. So if you want your yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes perfect sense for for Paris, uh,
Speaker 1: now we get to a point where we start talking
Speaker 1: about whether or not there's actually a future for vending machines.
Speaker 1: And the reason why we even have this discussion is
Speaker 1: when Joe first brought up this listener mail and said
Speaker 1: we should do this. My first reaction was at vending machines,
Speaker 1: how are they relevant now? Because I was thinking about
Speaker 1: another story that broke recently here in Atlanta. Atlanta is
Speaker 1: one of the markets where Amazon is rolling out its
Speaker 1: Prime Now service, which is where if you're an Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime member, you can order something and for free, you
Speaker 1: can get the delivery within two hours for certain items,
Speaker 1: and for an additional fee, you can get it within
Speaker 1: an hour of ordering it. And I thought, in a
Speaker 1: world where I can sit at home and order whatever
Speaker 1: it is I want and get it within an hour
Speaker 1: without leaving my house, why would I even care about
Speaker 1: vending machines. I mean, we had talked about the potential
Speaker 1: for vending machines to replace brick and mortar stores. They
Speaker 1: have a much lower footprint, much smaller footprints. So obviously
Speaker 1: there's that that has a big, you know, attractive factor
Speaker 1: to it. But then I was thinking, but I don't
Speaker 1: don't you have to leave my house, and I thought, wait,
Speaker 1: sometimes I do leave my house, and those rare occasions
Speaker 1: when I leave my house and I'm somewhere else, I
Speaker 1: might want to get something and yet not talk to anybody.
Speaker 1: How can I do that without becoming the most you know,
Speaker 1: socially awkward or stand offish person. Well, vending machines. That's
Speaker 1: a great solution, right, I can get the stuff I
Speaker 1: need from a vending machine while I'm out and about
Speaker 1: and yet not have to interface talk to a person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it had broad her since this is sort
Speaker 1: of the question about where and when commerce is going
Speaker 1: to happen in the future, because a just one example,
Speaker 1: a perhaps unfortunate fact for people who work as cashiers
Speaker 1: is that like determining the cost of an item and
Speaker 1: then accepting payment and then making change are all tasks
Speaker 1: that are pretty easy to automate, as we've seen from
Speaker 1: the self check outlines at the grocery store or the
Speaker 1: hardware store. Yeah, and it's it's kind of strange in
Speaker 1: my opinion that there are still as many cashiers left
Speaker 1: with jobs as there are. I mean, I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: say that. I don't mean like that cashiers can do
Speaker 1: all kinds of great things that that computers can't do.
Speaker 1: You know, they can help you, you know, they can
Speaker 1: interact with you personally, and they can take stuff out
Speaker 1: to your car for you. Um, they do provide a
Speaker 1: lot of services that can't be automated. But it just
Speaker 1: seems like, I don't know businesses that are in the
Speaker 1: mindset of, you know, let's slash all the features and
Speaker 1: get it down to the bare bones. I think there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of that going on, a lot
Speaker 1: of automation of the selling point kind of tasks there.
Speaker 1: But coupled that with the sort of increasing demand to
Speaker 1: scale down physical space, especially in urban areas, and the
Speaker 1: approach of on demand manufacturing, and it seems to me
Speaker 1: like you've got a recipe for an economy in which
Speaker 1: vending machines replace many kinds of other or traditional points
Speaker 1: of sale like stores and kiosks and stuff. One example
Speaker 1: that I thought about was books. I mean, think about
Speaker 1: what happens when you buy a new book and let's
Speaker 1: say you know, you're not exactly so yeah, let's say
Speaker 1: you want a paper book and not the book kind,
Speaker 1: and there are still bookstores. You know, you can go
Speaker 1: out to a Barnes and Noble or something that pulped
Speaker 1: dead trees. They're great. I've heard tell of such places.
Speaker 1: So imagine you're the person Jonathan that would walk into
Speaker 1: a book start and buy a new copy of a book.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't that store be replaced with a book vending machine?
Speaker 1: And it doesn't need to hold copies of every book
Speaker 1: that there could possibly be in the store. It just
Speaker 1: needs digital memory banks, paper cover material, glue ink. You
Speaker 1: know that's about printed demands. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You key
Speaker 1: in your selection, authorized payment, the machine prints out and
Speaker 1: binds your book in a few minutes. I mean, how
Speaker 1: many other types of products could this be applied to
Speaker 1: with with three D printing and all kinds of technology
Speaker 1: like that, Shure. I do imagine that it would probably
Speaker 1: take longer than a few minutes, depending on how long
Speaker 1: the book is. But even so, you could have to
Speaker 1: be looking at like things that have to dry, like inconglue, right,
Speaker 1: But you could totally have it be a thing where
Speaker 1: you make your order, you go do something else, and
Speaker 1: when you come back, your book is done, and then
Speaker 1: you put in a little code and it drops your
Speaker 1: book in. Like I could see that, like there even
Speaker 1: if you have the objection of some of these things
Speaker 1: we propose take more time to put together than just
Speaker 1: a few minutes, using the technology of creating a unique
Speaker 1: code identifier for each consumer, so that when your order
Speaker 1: is ready, you just go up and it's just like
Speaker 1: the old vending machines where you want to get that
Speaker 1: candy bar, you put your code in, but instead of
Speaker 1: it opening up so that it you know, or unraveling
Speaker 1: so your candy bar falls down, it drops the appropriate
Speaker 1: order into the receptacle and then you pick it up
Speaker 1: and probably you wouldn't even have to enter your code.
Speaker 1: It would just scan your eyeball or your brain, implanet
Speaker 1: arrify d chip or oh yeah, I remember this guy,
Speaker 1: he has terrible tasted books. Yeah. Yeah, here's your Dan Brown,
Speaker 1: here's your tech war. There you go. No, I I
Speaker 1: totally see your point, Joe, And like especially part of
Speaker 1: part of a distant future, as you know, one of
Speaker 1: those moves towards automating all of these low skill jobs
Speaker 1: and letting people do more creative, fulfilling jobs. Uh, which
Speaker 1: is hypothetically great, um, but you know, at risk of
Speaker 1: sounding completely obvious, just because something can be automated doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it's necessarily easier. Easier, It certainly doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it's cheaper, um, and it might not even be
Speaker 1: more desirable. I mean, if you suggested to the owner
Speaker 1: of a privately owned second hand bookstore that they buy
Speaker 1: a robot instead of manning the desk themselves, well, I
Speaker 1: guess it depends on the temperament of the bookstore owner.
Speaker 1: Like you know that black and black books, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but but I but I would I would argue that
Speaker 1: black and black books his main pleasure in life comes
Speaker 1: from being disdainful to people who come into his bookshop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he could just sit outside side and drink wine
Speaker 1: and be disdainful of people as they walk into his bookshop.
Speaker 1: I suppose that's true either either way. I imagine that
Speaker 1: you would elicit a strong response from from that sort
Speaker 1: of suggestion, and I would pose it that there is
Speaker 1: something to be said for having the human element in
Speaker 1: small daily interactions. There's been a whole bunch of psychological
Speaker 1: research done on the types of societies in which automated
Speaker 1: vending has taken off, and the effects of not interacting
Speaker 1: with humans is often um. The results of those psychological
Speaker 1: studies of course, are like, we don't know yet. More
Speaker 1: research needs to be done, as often happens in psychological studies.
Speaker 1: UM and as far as the expense goes, I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up an interesting application of automated vending. This
Speaker 1: is a This is an automated robotic library at the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago. It uses this huge robotic system to
Speaker 1: retrieve materials. UM. Its stacks take up one seven of
Speaker 1: the usual space, which is pretty cool. Uh. It's reading
Speaker 1: room is huge and light filled and gorgeous because you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about the kind of uh the
Speaker 1: kind of light issues that that sensitive materials have. You know,
Speaker 1: it can store those sensitive materials much more carefully, with
Speaker 1: much less interaction with unnecessary dirty librarian hands, all the
Speaker 1: oils and stuff that could damage the materials. Sure that
Speaker 1: there's still library staff, of course, to help you out
Speaker 1: and and help you figure out what you're looking for
Speaker 1: and how to find it. Umture of libraries. Someday we
Speaker 1: absolutely should. And the thing only cost like one million dollars,
Speaker 1: easily within every library's budget. Yeah, the big, big money
Speaker 1: making uh organizations that are libraries. I keep wanting to say,
Speaker 1: libraries just just to be just to be contrary, well,
Speaker 1: you know, any library is expensive, given that the containment
Speaker 1: systems for dangerous librarians. Yes, all the librarians with their
Speaker 1: clowd hands and their habit of of Uh, you don't
Speaker 1: listen to night Vale, do you Jo? Yeah, librarians are
Speaker 1: pretty terrifying creatures, as welcome to night Failure also in
Speaker 1: real life. So I know librarians, they are terrifying. They're
Speaker 1: awesome in the true sense of the word. They inspire
Speaker 1: awe Anyway, one of the other things I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention is that if we do move to a future
Speaker 1: where vending becomes more of a commonplace sort of means
Speaker 1: of getting materials when you are products, services, whatever, I
Speaker 1: guess it'd have to be good. So, I mean, you
Speaker 1: might get a coupon for a service that way. But
Speaker 1: if that happens to be more prevalent in the future,
Speaker 1: there are other questions this brings up. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: what happens to the people who would otherwise be employed
Speaker 1: by the brick and mortar versions of the stores, which
Speaker 1: we've kind of touched upon. That is of question that
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily have an answer to. I mean, ideally, yes,
Speaker 1: they get better jobs doing something else, but that's kind
Speaker 1: of a pie in the sky, idealized world answer, not
Speaker 1: a real world answer. Also, what happens to the space
Speaker 1: of the brick and mortar stores that go out of
Speaker 1: business when something like this, where you have the combination
Speaker 1: of services like Amazon Prime Now and vending machines out
Speaker 1: in public, When all of that is meeting many of
Speaker 1: our needs, maybe not all of them, but enough of them,
Speaker 1: what happens to all the space for the stores that
Speaker 1: used to do those things. What do we turn that into.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting question that we can't really answer here.
Speaker 1: We didn't prepare for that, But I think that could
Speaker 1: be a fun episode in the future to talk about.
Speaker 1: As we get more efficient, as we create these new
Speaker 1: on demand services that can do things like create furniture
Speaker 1: or books or whatever you might think of in these
Speaker 1: these this on demand manufacturing world, what do we do
Speaker 1: with all the space that used to be there just
Speaker 1: to hold the stuff? Build more apartments and water slides.
Speaker 1: I am in favor of the water slides, uh, depending
Speaker 1: upon where in town you want to put those apartments.
Speaker 1: I've got some strong opinions about that, but that's because
Speaker 1: of traffic in my neighborhood anyway, Uh, I am curious
Speaker 1: about that. I think we should do an episode at
Speaker 1: some point about, you know, some of the other perhaps
Speaker 1: uh problems that we don't really necessarily consider that could
Speaker 1: go along with this amazing vision of the future. What
Speaker 1: what do we do with that? And if it all
Speaker 1: turns out to be water slides? That's an awesome conversation
Speaker 1: all by itself. I'm also curious what our listeners think.
Speaker 1: What do you think about live crabs or live crabs,
Speaker 1: Live crabs and librarians. That should be the title of
Speaker 1: this episode, which would make no sense whatsoever, But I'm
Speaker 1: okay with that Occasionally, UM, I probably won't call it
Speaker 1: life crabs and Librarians, But I am curious what you
Speaker 1: guys think about vending machines, also, just the idea of
Speaker 1: what happens to the people and the space that would
Speaker 1: normally be dedicated to things that vending machines could potentially replace.
Speaker 1: Do you think there is a future? Do you think
Speaker 1: this whole vending machine thing is one of those deals
Speaker 1: that's always going to have like a niche, but it's
Speaker 1: never going to get bigger than that. That's a valid response,
Speaker 1: but I'm curious what you guys think. Also, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes of forward thinking, I'd
Speaker 1: like to hear those as well. Can you get in
Speaker 1: touch with us by writing us an email. The address
Speaker 1: is FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or
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Speaker 1: read all of them. We really enjoy them. Keep them coming.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to you again really soon. For more on
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