The new restaurant, UWink in Los Angelos opened to mixed reviews, but everyone is gawking about the interactive elements and technology used, so that you can order your meals, pay, play games, and even interact with other people across the room via your computer screen.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/top/first-or-close-to-it-uwink-restaurant-review-208033.php
My question: whatever happened to just getting up and walking over to someone?
In Japan, it's almost an epidemic, this shyness factor that keeps young people from meeting eachother. But UWink is in America. America isn't the country that developed a small female robot marketed to lonely males of 20 and over. America is the place you should be able to walk into a bar and say a loud, "Hello everyone!" Only, at UWink, everyone's faces are looking at a screen.
The developer of UWink is the creator of Atari. I can see the marketing potential, but I guess I must be getting old. The idea of making food "fun" seems to be locked in my brain somewhere between purple vegetables and Count Chocula -- both foods that I would personally avoid. In a country that already has issues with food, do we NEED to make food fun? How about just focusing on nutritious and good tasting, with a low negative impact on the environment?
Your thoughts?
