Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m a weather geek. I love lightening shows, towering cloudscapes and blowing, drifting snow; so when a new show called “Storm Chasers” came on the Discovery Channel, you can bet I was planted on the sofa with my bag of popcorn for the duration, watching the intrepid scientists and filmmakers chasing down one doppler radar image after another — and watching their frantic frustration mount as their computers developed a case of the hiccups.
I’ve felt their pain. You’ve felt their pain. In fact, anyone who has stood in line at a check-out waiting for a computer to recognize a bar code knows the infuriated urge to yell at a faceless screen that refuses to answer when you tell it the price. Can’t we just go back to the old way?
Maybe we should think carefully before we answer. Certainly technology has expanded our limits, and nowhere is this more true than in the retail sector. America votes with its dollars, and it loves, loves, loves the SuperStore — acres of choice and variety in every category from groceries to home improvement. Inventory of such magnitude can only be managed with automated systems. Computerized inventories have made the mail and on-line order phenomenon possible, in fact. How else can you order something from a store in New York and have it shipped from a warehouse in Indiana to your home in California?
