New kind of tech bubble

White House, customers enter the store, walk up to an iPad kiosk and place an order for one of the vegetarian, quinoa-based bowls. Within minutes, they’re taking videos, Snapchats or photos — selfies are a regular occurrence — as their food, seemingly magically, appears. Along a wall of cubbies, one lights up with a name. The customer double-taps the screen, and the cubby opens. A few customers are so busy documenting the experience that the door closes before they can retrieve their order — another need for the employee, who walks the floor wearing a red shirt emblazoned with eatsa’s design.

The time and cost efficiencies created from the ability to zip in and out of a restaurant or grocery store and order an item in milliseconds at the push of a button or tell a car where you want to go without it making a wrong turn are obvious.

But what happens when we cut out those innocuous, fleeting moments with the person behind the counter or in the driver’s seat? Allison Pugh, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, says it amounts to placing ourselves in social bubbles that consist only of like-minded people.

“These casual interactions are the few cases in which you’re interacting with people potentially of a different class or a different race or a different gender identity or a different nationality,” she says. “We are walling ourselves off from each other.”

Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, a non-profit group that studies media and technology, says the situation isn’t as dire as some make it sound — and actually can enhance our lives.

“Everything that eliminates a routine task frees up opportunities to do the things that we’re uniquely capable of doing, which is thinking and creating and connecting,” she says.