the bay area backwater

Having just returned from Harrisburg, PA, I am saddened and disgusted at how the Bay Area is reluctant to embrace technology.

Here in the Silicon Valley, we invent bleeding edge shit every day, we probably make all the tech that other people are using, and then completely refuse to adopt it.

Maybe 1 in 10 stores here has self checkout. A few Home Depots, a couple Albertsons, none of the Safeways.. In PA, they've already gone BEYOND self-checkout. When you walk into a Giant there, you can pick up a hand-scanner off the wall, and actually scan your own groceries as you add them to your cart! This is freaking genius, it eliminates having to wait behind someone who can't figure out the self scanner, and massively parallelizes the checkout process, having people spend time scanning items as they choose them.

I seriously felt like a hick visiting the big city.

Not only that, but sprinkled throughout the store are touchscreen maps. You can type in "toothbrushes", and it shows you a "you are here" map, with you and the toothbrushes. Yeah, you never have to wander around lost, or track down an employee who has no idea what you're saying or where toothbrushes are.

The irony of this goes even further, because I actually thought of a touchscreen map like this about two years ago, and sent in a patent application for it, which I'm sure will be rejected. Seriously, that's depressing. I thought I invented something new, because I lived in such a goddamn technology armpit that I'm unaware of the cool shit other people are using.

Back SEVEN YEARS AGO, in PA, they already had touchscreen ordering at Sheetz, a gas station/sub shop. They still don't have it in any restaurants here. Just walk up, pick what you want on the screen, and they make it and hand it to you. No communication issues, and the parallelism removes single people's indecisiveness as a logjam to everyone else.

This is the way we should be doing things. These are smart ideas. I don't understand the reluctance of CA to adopt these things that unquestionably make the shopping experience more pleasant and quick for the shoppers. People in PA obviously love it. What's the problem? I mean, is there a huge checker's union in CA that is fighting the self-checkout? Even still, there's literally no excuse for not having things like touchscreen maps. Who would object to that?

Oh yeah, and I didn't have to drive 60 goddamn miles to get to a store that was open 24 hours in PA. California's resistance to having stores open late is also baffling. If it's after 10pm here, you might as well just go to sleep. It drives me nuts when I see a cool new video game coming out, and I read an article about all the midnight launch parties they're doing in Ohio, or Maryland, or Pennsylvania, and not a single California location is mentioned.

I just don't understand the motivation for CA being so backwards.