A SCANNER IN THE WORKS
AS A person who is somewhat afraid of supermarket self check-out, I very much enjoyed reading Beth Teitell’s article (“A self-checkout way of life,’’ Page A1, Jan. 4). This is the latest and most visible step in a trend that started more than 60 years ago.
I recently drafted a foreword to a forthcoming book on services industries in which I view this trend to replace paid human servers with technology and to trick us into becoming our own servers as one that began right after World War II.
What will be next?
Richard C. Larson
Cambridge
The writer is director of the Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals at MIT. 
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