In the future, everything will be automated. The choices will still exist, but the tedium of choosing will be solved around. Really, we're almost there today. Telemetry in advertising, customer service, online shopping. Your seamless web experience. Seems the last step into the next great frontier will be teaching computers to detect whether or not you just took a shit.
*The coffee machines at work display these three options for regular coffee, decaf coffee, and cocoa, respectively.
*The coffee machines at work display these three options for regular coffee, decaf coffee, and cocoa, respectively.
Interesting prediction. One problem with choice is that once you make one, you may feel that you have sacrificed all the options you didn't go with. If computers can make choices for us without our being aware of it, you might wind up with a pack of really satisfied consumers. Having said that, my Interlace Teleputer still thinks that Shampoo is the product most likely to enthrall me.
ReplyDeleteI hear you, and I feel like that's usually the immediate, gut-dropping fear when you make that choice - that you've now closed off a multitude of others. I actually feel this way most often before I make a choice, as if I'll be denying myself the opportunity of the many for the selection of just one. Give a choice about a week though, and it'll bloom into a multitude of new things you couldn't have hoped to guess at. And the ultimately satisfied consumer is the dead guy in his coffin. "He'll never choose another brand" (actually, I can see an old fallen-from-grace Don Draper pitching that across a dusty particle board desk).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't know if you've seen the Herbal Essences commercials, but that shit certainly looks enthralling.