NEWS: Hey Dumbass, Your Shopping Cart is Smarter than You

CULTURE: Hey Dumbass, Your Shopping Cart is Smarter than You

The question isn't if the machines will take over, it's when and where. The answer? Now, and in the supermarket. Apparently we've all grown so feeble-minded that we're incapable of reading ingredients lists. Likewise, we seem to be having trouble with the concept of "too much" when it comes to junk food. The solution? Literacy mentoring? Help from a nutritionist? Puhleez. The solution, obviously, is to let someone else do the thinking for us--ideally a smart cart.

As Engadget notes, various attemps have been made to build a viable smart cart over the years, but this one--built around a simple barcode--might actually take off.

I'm really not some neo-Luddite opposed to this sort of technology overall. In fact, I'm all for technology that enhances convenience and facilitates our ability to gather information, learn, and grow. But this just strikes me as a cop out. Carts that scan each item, keep "a running total of how much you are spending — and actually eliminate the need to wait in line at the check-out" sound great, and guess what: they already exist.

Shopping carts that do the thinking for you, though, don't make anybody smarter, and don't really address the dangerous disconnect between people and the stuff we call food. People who need a smart cart to tell them when they've loaded up with too many bags of chips, cartons of cookies, and tubs of ice cream have a bigger problem than a barcode scanner can fix.

You know, if I am gonna be hounded by a wise-cracking robot, I better be in a spaceship. Though to be fair, us fatsos can't get enough advice on how dangerous our food is, but it sounds so much more like concern and less like judgement when it comes from a stranger in a Safeway.

It'd be pretty funny if, after a certain point, it started blaring alerts if it detected other shopping carts within a certain range. "Warning, this one's a real fatass," "Wide load, comin' through," or "Make sure fatso here doesn't grab anything out of your cart."

Fuck me the movie Idiocracy really is coming true.

Can't you just not scan the item before placing it in the cart?

I am not seeing a difference between this and letting the media make your political decisions for you.

i am in relatively good shape and one of the things i tell people when they ask for advice is to learn how to read labels. just because something says healthIER doesn't mean its healthy. theres lots of little tricks the companies use such as serving size (yeah, cuz im really going to drink a single soda on 2.5 seperate occasions or eat 6 tortilla chips) as well as "natural' flavors being a huge blanket cop out for any flavoring that isn't 100% chemically made. Inversely, things with alot of calories and fat *such as nuts* aren't junk food as they are high in good fats and vitamins. Oh, and compare labels since certain competitive products have a huge difference in nutritional value due to the way they process their foods. yeah I'm that guy in the store reading labels it works though. If your trying to be healthier just make sure that everything you eat justifies itself (providing a vitamin, protein, fiber, calcium, etc) and you'll be fine.

Am I the only one that doesn't see this as a bad idea? With so many different products and companies out there, being an informed consumer (which I feel is very important--especially in a extremely capitalistic community) is becoming increasingly difficult, if not a full time job. For those who would like to be informed consumers, but don't have copious amounts of time to research different companies this doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Keep in mind, I'm focusing on the ethical/environmentally friendly factors not the "you're a fatass and should by less potato chips" part.

"Beef or chicken? Beef or chicken? How about both!?"
-Tucker Max

I don't think it's such a bad idea, but I think the better solution might be spending these resources on eliminating the production of unhealthy food.

It wouldn't make sense for stores to have these things, they WANT people to buy their product, including junk food!

I agree.

And to a further extent, if this got companies competing to be more ethically/environmentally friendly, how great would that be?

Exactly

I steal from grocery stores. I'll put something in the cart, then into my pockets when no one is looking (or I can get to an isolated part of the store)... will the cart know?

Also, what about homeless people who steal these carts. Will they be lojacked?

I can't possibly see this being a commercial success. Unless these carts are legislated into place, I give them about 5 minutes. A computerized shopping cart is extremely costly (plus, you have to buy a good 150 of them per store), and it's intrusive to the customer. Plus, what store owner in his right mind is going to voluntarily buy a machine that will lead to fewer sales (at least in the beginning)? If this were going to happen at all, wouldn't it have happened already? We can do it now. Why not just hire a guy to walk around the store with each customer and yell a them for buying the wrong product? Because from a business perspective, it's a bad fucking idea, that's why.

Something tells me that the management of most retail food markets is not really wanna go whole hog on a new technology (Whole Food Market, perhaps) that makes shoppers feel guilty or give second thoughts to impulse purchasing, since it is most likely gonna mean less sales and therefore less profits. I could be wrong...

Better living through technology? More like a means for some high-tech company to sell more gadgets and make money while convincing retailers and consumers that we're better off for using all the latest technological advances.

People need to educate themselves and learn how to make informed decisions. That means buying food that is less processed, less packaged, with fewer chemicals, organically/sustainably & locally grown/in season, produced in a 'fair trade' manner where farmers and farmworkers are paid well for their labor. Organic certification, fair trade and sustainable commerce labeling that are stringent and standardized... these are things that we ought to be paying attention to and encouraging with our choices we make at the checkout line. I don't think a computerized shopping cart is going to educate me about how much oil it took to produce an organic frozen pet food packaged in New Zealand and shipped by air in freezer compartments, or heavy cases of glass-bottled water from artesian wells in Fiji or Italy shipped across the oceans to California.

It's really pretty simple. Eat as naturally as you can: local grown, minimally processed, and in season. I don't need a chemist or a nutritionist or a computer to figure it out. If that's too much for shoppers to want to think about, then they probably don't care about it anyway...

Sweet!

Get bent. I can read...

Won't matter to me, because i just buy what I need for a day instead of wasting a ton of money on refrigeration.

I don't usually even have to bother with a basket, much less a cart.

curious how these would respond when a cart is filled with alcohol like 90% percent of them were tonight (homecoming go vandals! get drunk). Smart-cart knows that you have a drinking problem and play too much beer pong with shitty beer and makes you feel bad about yourself?

So what's the cart going to say when you buy a bottle of baby oil, whipped cream and a Lebanese cucumber???

I'm starting to think it really is inevitable

Ooook if America hasn't gotten the point they're fat already, a cart isn't going to change their mind. you don't even need carts for Big Mac and Whoppers now do ya?

if i were a fatass and my buggy told me 'hey those Cakesters are going straight to your ass, hippo' i'd "accidentally" heinously murder it.
then enjoy my cakesters
CAUSE THEY BOMB<33

okay, really know, this is a pointless idea. if people aren't going to read the label before they stick their food in the cart, why would they read their cart scanner thingy? and making people feel shitty about getting a tasty snack that might not be 100% good for you isn't going to do anything but make people feel shitty about themselves. how is that helpful? if you're eating too much crappy food, you're already feeling bad about yourself...why make it worse? do people really think this is going to push them over the edge to stop eating crap and turn their life around? and honestly, if you don't care enough to read the label, like you're going to care enough to make sure everything you put into your cart gets scanned.

and frankly, if a fucking shopping cart tried to make me feel bad about eating my mint choc. chip ice cream, i'd find the cart's ass and shove the scanner up it.

It's a great idea. But there should be a button we ladies can select so we can put it on "Code Red" mode...that way when PMS strikes, our carts won't be calling us fatasses. Maybe the carts will say nice stuff to us instead and wish us a happy period.