Happy 2024! Welcome to the future that’s already here in more ways than I might have recognized in the last article I wrote on technology back in December.
As I’ve indicated earlier in the series, HelloFresh has become a regular part of our weekly dinner plans. This became even more prevalent with this year’s Christmas dinner, where I decided to start this article. But first, a few things about HelloFresh.
When we started ordering HelloFresh a little over two years ago, it was kind of a novelty, in that a box arrived on our doorstep with three meals for my wife and I to enjoy, which I took the lead in making. I immediately liked the approach as it reminded me of the model car kits, I used to build as a kid. All the parts came in the box with instructions on how to glue together a plastic AMT 1:25 scale 1967 Chevy Corvette or Gene Snow’s 1:16 scale ‘Revell Snowman’ Funny Car. The idea then for me was to build a tiny replica of a car I dreamed of someday owning or racing on a drag strip. The idea that something as practical as a meal would be put together in a similar type kit as technology advanced, never entered my mind.
Bring on Christmas 2023. My wife ordered HelloFresh’s Christmas dinner special for six people. Now don’t get me wrong, these meal kits—not unlike their plastic model predecessors—are not pre-made or packaged and ready to eat. They require work and unless you have some culinary skill will take some potentially agonizing time to master. The benefit is the kit comes with a detailed recipe (the model kit’s assembly instructions) and everything required to make the meal except salt, pepper, and oil (like glue and paint for a model kit). The detailed instructions for this Christmas dinner were exemplary. Not only was there a detailed recipe for each dish, of which there were several, but everything came in a colourful booklet not unlike that included in large Star Wars Lego kits aka the Death Star or Blockade Runner. The HelloFresh booklet included a full itinerary of instructions from start to finish including preparation and cook times for the entire Christmas meal. In my wife’s words, “This might be the best Christmas meal we’ve ever prepared!”
Having experienced HelloFresh (along with Chefs Plate, which is almost identical for reasons I now understand—HelloFresh owns the Canadian company) for about two years now, I thought we were on to something pretty new. But I learned over the holidays that HelloFresh has been around for over ten years. Founded in Berlin, Germany in 2011. They now maintain over 7 million active customers worldwide with a revenue of $6.5 billion USD. They are neither new nor a secret.
With technology crossing all areas of life like meal planning and preparation, some is not yet here but close. In my December’s “Save By Tech?”, I wrote on how our systems of transportation are changing with driverless cars and Uber. Waymo and Cruise, driverless car fare companies in California, had been given approval in August 2023 to start taking fares in San Francisco. I argued in the article that this was in all likelihood only the beginning of a driverless car society. I rationalized my theory by comparing it to the music subscription service Spotify. Who would have believed, even twenty years ago, that music would become a monthly subscription service. Where for the cost of buying one CD in the past, one can now listen to practically every song that has ever been recorded on their mobile phone. In the article I proposed that it wouldn’t be that difficult to extend the subscription idea into transportation. Uber has already brought taxi or fare transportation to our phones. If self-driving cars replace the Uber drivers, which I think may have been the plan all along as the Uber driver business model seems unsustainable, then it’s not a big leap to see the driverless car fare model become a monthly subscription package likely based on miles travelled per month. The data to support such an idea will be available if it’s not already.
Now some object to this idea, philosophically, because they want to control how they get to where they want to go. But with the driverless car they do, they just won’t have to operate the vehicle. It will be like having a personal driver take one wherever they want, whenever they want. Further, as I wrote in December, fill-ups, maintenance, parking, licensing and, even insurance, will all become activities of the past. In fact, as I wrote this article, Waymo released a report where after their driverless cars had driven over 7 million miles, there were an estimated 17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported crashes than what humans driving the same distance in the same areas would have experienced. With data continually accumulating and algorithms and sensors improving—technology, in other words—self-driving will only improve. As this data continues to grow, one can already see the scenario where for one to drive a conventional car, insurance will skyrocket, making driving a privilege of the wealthy. You can almost hear kids of the future saying to their parents, “You used to drive? Why?” just like they already say, “You used to buy music? What’s a CD?”
Further to the cost of insurance and the disappearance of the other responsibilities of car ownership will be the argument of electric versus gas powered vehicles. To the passenger, the rider, this will no longer be of concern. This will become a cost focus to those operating these new fare transportation companies with much more lobbying pressure to lower fuel pricing—electric or gas—to minimize the operating costs of these driverless fleets.
As a side note, Waymo is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet and Cruise is owned by General Motors.
Remember back in 2013 when Jeff Bezos, then CEO of Amazon, announced they would deliver our packages by drone. Everyone got excited questioning how that would be possible. Our airways would be filled with flying packages. What was humanity coming to? But to me the point wasn’t drones delivering our packages, but thinking of alternatives to the delivery service truck pulling up at my door to deliver my latest order or going to the mailbox. Amazon made their first drone delivery in England in 2016 and received approval from the FAA in 2020 to trial services in the U.S. What’s more, Amazon began delivering their Amazon branded packages in their own Amazon branded delivery vehicles. I’ll add here that they also revolutionized sending gifts or parcels to others. Why buy a gift and pay to send it via a delivery service when one can both buy and send the gift via Amazon for the cost of the gift? You can even have your item gift wrapped with Amazon!
Another thing I realized with Amazon over the holidays was the shopping for items like shoes. In conversation, I learned that one may order a number of different shoes they like and want to try on, not unlike what’s done shopping in a store. When shopping for shoes, one does not know for sure whether they like them until they see them on their feet. The person then sends back to Amazon the shoes they don’t like or don’t fit. At first, I thought this was wasteful and taking advantage of the system but after I thought about it, isn’t this what has to happen if online is to truly replace the successful in-store experience of shopping for shoes? Again, algorithms, data and visuals will improve our selection and sizing capabilities online and reduce this order-and-return process but as that evolves, order-and-return will continue or people will continue to shop in-store. Amazon has partly addressed this already with its continually improving return process, which today sits second to none.
Although these are only three examples of technology coming or already upon us, it seems no matter where I look, technology is bringing the future forward quickly. From farming, sowing and harvesting, to restaurants and shopping, with online reservations and self-check cashiers, and I haven’t touched on AI. I’ll leave that for a future article.
Some worry that this advancing technology will bring us closer to a new world order, a conspiracy theory that hypothesizes a secret emerging totalitarian world government. There are those that think with the HelloFreshes, self-driving cars, online shopping, and the plethora of other advances in technology that take away the mundane from our everyday lives, and that once in place, “they” (whoever they are) will control us. Control what we can eat, where we can go and what we can buy. But aren’t we really there already? If “they” wanted to, couldn’t they just shut off the power to our homes? Or shut off our water supply? Or shut down our transportation systems? I think there’s a self-check with all of these technological advances in the free-market marketplace—and that self-check is to keep us happy and buying. There’s no forcing us to buy what we don’t want to going on. The letting go of control is ours for what we hope to gain back in our daily lives. We’re giving up the act of driving, not the getting to of where we want to go when we want to. We’re giving up the act of grocery shopping, not what we want to eat. We’re giving up the act of not having to go to the store to shop, not for what we want to shop for and have. We have more options to choose from today than in any other period in history, at least in the western world, whether that be where we go for coffee, get our groceries, the style of shoes we want to wear or for that matter almost anything else. Furthermore, if HelloFresh stops delivering or offering what I want, I’ll stop ordering from them. Or if a self-driving subscription service doesn’t pick me up on time or delivers me late for an appointment or doesn’t take me where I want to go, I’ll stop using it. Or if Amazon stops offering and delivering what I want when I want it, I’ll stop using them. There’s something about the free-market marketplace that self-checks itself and refuses to be controlled by anything but itself.
But do I think all this technology advancement is good? Good question. At first glance, maybe not, as most of technology seems to take us away from interacting with each other. But with a little more thought on the subject of benefit, I observe that many of our interactions with others at work or within our communities and living environments are not interactions of so-called community, like in the Book of Matthew when he refers to the second great commandment in 22:39, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” but instead for activities of exchange like commerce. Many of our interactions with others are for what they do for us or can do for us, not because of fellowship. As writer Samuel Johnson was once quoted in saying, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
I wonder whether all our technology will cause us to foster different relationships with each other, more meaningful relationships, because we want to and not because of some gain ulterior to the relationship of love for our fellow human beings. Technology promised to free us from our many duties in life but instead seems to have enslaved us. But maybe there is hope yet, like in freeing us from the driving to and from the places we want to go yet still allowing us to get there and back when we want to. Or not needing to go out and shop for some new item but instead having the leisure to shop from where we are and still get what we want. Or even allowing us to be at home to prepare our meals and still eat what we want. I’m still hopeful that the promise of technology to give us back our time for meaningful endeavours is coming in the future and may, in some instances, already be here.
As always Doug, you provoke thought. Food, as example, is in dire duress and the argument is too big for this response. Full research from seed to plate will tell a story to interested researchers what happens when corporate gets control of a basic human need. Never before has society been so undernourished yet so obese. How does this happen? The rabbit trails are out there and they tell a story.