The shape of things to come, together with software and day-to-day robots

self-driving inventory robot at grocery store, 12/2025

Not yet a common sight, there is every reason to believe that shoppers will get used to seeing more and more self-paced inventory robots for multi-sited stores having extensive inventory, large floorspace, and little risk of malfunction or human harm. This one is operating during daytime hours in a Midwestern grocery chain in Grand Rapids, Michigan early in December 2025. Perhaps it was piloted after hours to prove its reliability and to work out the obstacles or situations defeating its programming.

Although it is the stature of an adult who is smaller than average height, its lack of facial features or any aggressive, outward pointed appendages makes it big enough for shoppers to steer around and safe-looking enough to avoid anxiety.

As with all electronic innovations, there is a question of use-life; how long its parts and software will be supported by the maker or the distributor. Production and sales cycles seem to run shorter and shorter. Older models are antiquated as shiny new ones are showcased for trade-in, trade-up, or lease (even without 'planned obsolescence' business models). This raises the question about electronic waste - both in production and at end of life (repurpose, reuse, or recycle before landfilling what remains). Similar issues of environmental impact of making, using & maintaining, and disposal come with each technology: medieval shipbuilding, early internal combustion automobiles (now the battery-powered eV fleets), portable Internet communication devices like smartphones, or with spacecraft.

Seeing this photo sparks thoughts of "new normal" experiences of the youngest generation who grow up in this robot+(wireless/hackable) software cultural landscape. Recent and elderly adults, and those in-between, will form impressions and learn strategies for interacting with "facsimile 'sentient' devices" like chatbots online, restaurant table servers, floor cleaners, driver-assist programs in case of heavy traffic or extreme weather information & onboard sensors that sometimes 'know better' than drivers, and in-store robotic clerks. But the youngest generation will see these things as standard, normal, possibly desirable and inevitable, rather than to know that things need not always depend on software and robots.

The Luddites resisted changes in production volume and precedents. So did the French textile workers throwing the wooden clogs (sabot) for sabotage of the pricey and dangerous machines they fed. Maybe people of 2025 will resist robots and apps infiltrating their home and work life, too. But if history is any guide, things did not go well for property offenders of the 1800s. Innovations and "new normal" can be a race to the bottom (per unit cost reduced, radius of markets widened or else market share wrested from competitors) unless thinking people decide not to proceed. There is a long trail of technologies finding no market or those threatening to undermine profitable status quo. But to assume that grocery store robots necessarily will flourish is not necessarily a good bet. Times do change, but in unexpected ways, sometimes. Just like times of upset triggered by warfare: outcomes are not certain.