I have some questions for former Google employees Paul McDonald and Ashwath Rajan, the men behind Bodega, a company that wants to, according to Fast Company, make corner stores—that is, actual bodegas—“a thing of the past” by putting app-accessible boxes full of nonperishables in the lobbies of apartment buildings, dorms, and gyms.
Paul, Ashwath, are you aware how important bodegas are to the neighborhoods they serve? Have you noticed how bodegas offer safety, security, and community—not the commodified, jargony version of “community” Silicon Valley has invented for itself to sell blockchain tech stocks and user data it harvested from social media posts about graduations and dead grandpas—but actual community, to neighborhoods full of human beings, only some of whom live in glass and steel towers with “virtual doormen,” full of West Elm furniture and “smart” A/C units?
Are you so far out of touch with what it means to be a person in the world that you think it requires “machine learning” to restock a neighborhood deli? The kids in my neighborhood love those little gummies shaped like hamburgers, so you know what the owners of the bodega in my neighborhood stock for them? Little gummies shaped like hamburgers. Do you comprehend that it does not require “machine learning” to see that people will need sidewalk salt in the winter and lemonade in the summer? Do you get that one does not need “machine learning” to predict that people like pretzels?
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