> Though, can you help me understand the connection between the grocery store checkout process and community a bit more?
It can be viewed on multiple levels.
First, there are many papers on the psychological literature about this, but [1] is an example, which is that even a little social contact with a few real people can make a person feel better. Check out Google scholar or the article I linked below to learn more. But that is also intuitive. But if a person is feeling a bit down and they have the "easy way out" (self checkout, other technologies that diminish casual human interaction), they will not gain the benefit of human contact.
Second, on a greater scale, if all these little things add up, people will seek out interactions less often. For example, a few years ago I ran into some strangers that became friends because I needed their help to find a rare bird (I'm a birder). If I had an advanced AI app that listened for bird calls and helped me find birds better than any human, I might never have made friends with them.
The point is, when technology is lacking to do something, we are more likely to seek out people to help us. Yes, technology does make some parts of life easier, but there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme.
> there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme.
On one hand though, would self-reliance also imply that people were responsible for actively seeking out social interactions like you're describing? I'm sort of confused when it comes to describing where the locus of control is when we're talking about these things.
It can be viewed on multiple levels.
First, there are many papers on the psychological literature about this, but [1] is an example, which is that even a little social contact with a few real people can make a person feel better. Check out Google scholar or the article I linked below to learn more. But that is also intuitive. But if a person is feeling a bit down and they have the "easy way out" (self checkout, other technologies that diminish casual human interaction), they will not gain the benefit of human contact.
Second, on a greater scale, if all these little things add up, people will seek out interactions less often. For example, a few years ago I ran into some strangers that became friends because I needed their help to find a rare bird (I'm a birder). If I had an advanced AI app that listened for bird calls and helped me find birds better than any human, I might never have made friends with them.
The point is, when technology is lacking to do something, we are more likely to seek out people to help us. Yes, technology does make some parts of life easier, but there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme.
1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-020-00298-6