Not far from my hotel in San Francisco was a tiny little shop dominated by this elaborate apparatus. I had a chance to stop in one afternoon and had a chat with the enthusiastic young woman in charge. This is how she described the vision of this shop:
"Reinventing retail to adapt to today's consumer demands: we innovate inside-the-box, our unique automated retail platform -- part interactive billboard, part next generation vending machine."
It was fun to push all the buttons, but once I learned the prices of the items being sold, I lost some of my enthusiasm. There are 2 more of these vending machines-- one in Las Vegas and the other in JFK airport in New York. I guess travelers in these cities generally have money to waste, but this librarian took hers home!
Huh, that's kind of neat! I'll have to check it out next time I'm killing time in JFK. It's definitely an interesting concept, but I don't think I'll be buying anything from it any time soon.
