Remember how Bush was blown away by bar codes?

[spinbaby]

Those of us of a certain age remember how the the elder Bush--Bush the Smarter--was amazed by a grocery-store bar-code scanner.

And today we have Mitt being amazed by touch-screen sandwich ordering:

"You press a little touchtone key pad… You touch this, touch this, touch this, go pay the cashier, and there's your sandwich," Romney said. "It's amazing!"

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/mitt-romney-really-liked-sandwich-computer-wawa-231304740.html

[geckosfeet]

1. Oh yes. I remember. That's what happens when you mingle

with the little people. You learn about their lives...

[magical thyme]

2. I guess they thought food grows

on butlers.

On the other hand, it's not unlike city-folk who think food comes wrapped in plastic...

[valerief]

4. Ha! Food grows on butlers. Love it.

[PotatoChip]

3. I thought of the very same thing when I saw that clip this morning.

History repeating itself with these out-of-touch, wealthy, R candidates.

[starroute]

5. That's not the only cluelessness in the story

"Where do you get your hoagies here? Do you get them at Wawas? Is that where you get them?" Romney asked.

"NOOO!" several members of the audience shouted in response.

Romney grinned. "No? You get them at Sheetz?" he said.

When the audience replied in the negative again, Romney seemed surprised. "No?" he said. "Where do you get them?"

As his audience threw out names of local delis in response, Romney paused and then proceeded to tell the audience about his trip to Wawa.

[SoutherDem]

6. I honestly haven't seen touch screens for customers to order either.

Where I live you give the order to an employee who uses a touch screen.

He bragged how competition brought about this wonderful device.

What I thought of was the employee who no longer has a job.

He is totally clueless.

[Plucketeer]

15. Good point about a job eliminated

We can all do our part for job preservation. Consider the refuse bins in fast food restaurants. You're expected to dutifully take your tray or basket to the trash bin and deposit wrappers and cartons into the cans. Don't do it! LEAVE your trays on the tables and just walk out when you're finished. It's job security for one of the minions working there if the supervisor has to have them bus tables!

[Sirveri]

22. It really isn't a job eliminated though, it's only eliminated if a machine makes the sandwich.

All the touch screen does is print out an order tag so that you don't have to actually talk to the employee.

Which is disturbing in its own right, but in this case doesn't cut down the actual number of people needed since that isn't a huge labor sink in the first place.

[Swede Atlanta]

7. Who is out of touch?

I doubt President Bush would have any problem doing self-checkout at a grocery store or ordering for himself from a touch screen. He is very much in touch with the lives of ordinary human beings (not just Americans).

The fact Mitt thought this was amazing just underscores how little he understands of the world. But I'll bet that experience has given him new ideas on how he can outsource even more jobs by making us do the work ourselves.

[fishwax]

19. did you mean Obama or Bush?

"I doubt President Bush would have any problem doing self-checkout at a grocery store or ordering for himself from a touch screen. He is very much in touch with the lives of ordinary human beings (not just Americans)."

I'm skeptical that Bush Junior has much experience going through self-checkout, or that he would be all that at ease with it

[rateyes]

8. "touchtone keypad?". really?

I bet he has never seen an ipad. He would probably stroke out!

[Cooley Hurd]

9. It's because his staff always does it for him.

He looks like a neanderthal staring at fire...

[mike dub]

10. Maybe

this is Mitt's tip-of-the-hat to good old American-ingenuity and 'the guy(or-gal)-who-invented-the-touch-screen'. Definitely not the venue for it, given Bush I and the bar code, but that's the only motive I can think of. I'm sure in Rmoney's mind whoever came up with that "amazing" idea has gotta be a pull-themself-up-by-the-bootstraps/rugged individualist Amurrican. (pre-supposing, as all good R's do, that touch-screen technology was even developed in America)

[RC]

12. Again, we didn't.

History of Touch Screen Technology
1960s
Historians consider the first touch screen to be a capacitive touch screen invented by E.A. Johnson at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, UK, around 1965 - 1967. The inventor published a full description of touch screen technology for air traffic control in an article published in 1968.
http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Touch-Screen.htm

[11 Bravo]

11. Hell, Romney was rendered spechless by doughnuts!

[mwooldri]

13. In general there are people who are surprised...

...about everyday things that most people are somewhat familiar with. I forgive HW Bush for being amazed at barcode scanners, because at that time around the parts I grew up barcode scanners were not common. Even when Clinton took office the checkout counter I worked had no barcode scanner and this was a reasonably large national supermarket chain. The store didn't get scanners until Clinton's reelection.

Romney being amazed at touchscreen ordering doesn't surprise me either. I was surprised when I first saw it at the gas pump (Sheets). That was about six years ago though. However if Romney and I traded places just for a day I think we would have surprise and wonder about how the other person lives.

I speak with people in my job who are surprised that the company allows their customers to do certain things like paying their bill over the phone, going to the Internet to view their bill, or even at the different questions we use to identify our customers (questions like how tall are you, what colleges you attended, or what car do you drive).

Things change. Not everyone worldwide is familiar with the way that certain other societies do things. Banking by text message on a cellphone is commonplace in Kenya... not so much here. The Japanese have some fancy toilets.

But this did demonstrate an important thing: Romney is from a different society from most of the USA. He needs to be in touch with all of the USA, not just 1% of it. Also that small businesses still exist and that places like wawa or sheetz or even subway are not the only places to get good sandwiches (presuming these places are "good" to begin with.). In retrospect he could have used that opportunity to promote local business as being import to the growth of America a.

[renate]

24. "He needs to be in touch with all of the USA, not just 1% of it"

That's the thing. I haven't seen anything like the touchscreen in question either (maybe because we don't spend the money it would take to eat out at a sandwich shop) but it's his being out of touch with the non-rich that scares the hell out of me. Even if he's not deliberately evil, he can't help but be unable to imagine the lives of the 99% of the people he wants to govern.

[siligut]

14. Do people find this story charming?

Why is this news?

[Nye Bevan]

16. Snopes link here:

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/bushscan.asp

[EFerrari]

18. Snopes doesn't say it didn't happen. They just disagree on the spin. n/t

[EFerrari]

17. Yep. But I bet Poppy could pick a chocolate donut out of a line up. n/t

[former9thward]

20. Snopes debunked that story long ago.

It turned out the reporter who wrote that story was not even present. He just made it up. http://www.snopes.com/history/american/bushscan.asp

[Igel]

21. I haven't seen one.

Last edited Sun Jun 17, 2012, 04:50 PM - Edit history (1)

Then again, I live in a backwards little know-nothing KKK-dominate town that hates science.

Houston. Only 13 million people, home to NASA and a few good tech industries, with a mayor who's a Democrat.

Romney, like a lot of other people, need to act surpised. Voluble. Enthusiastic.

Me, I look at the LHC and think, "Eh, technology. It'll seem obsolete in 20 years. Gee, a portable TB hard drive for $130, retail? Good price. I'll wait for $90."

Then I go into my classroom and upbraid my students for precisely this attitude, with a twist: I know, more or less, how the technology works; if I don't have a basic understanding, I find out. My turnips are typically clueless and prefer to let others do the work and understanding for them. Not only are they clueless, it's not like they're indifferent about their ignorance: Many are proud of it. If they had aPads, little asswiping machines that they could buy for $230, they'd assume that the ability to wipe their own asses was not only something they didn't need to acquire, but there was no relevance in even understanding how the technology worked.

This sort of proud indifference highlights that they know and use the technology and that they're so far above life that they have no interest in how it works or being able to do without it. It also puts down those without the tech: I have nice stuff even if my family was foreclosed on and has been couch surfing for the last few months; I can pay for my own car insurance and iPad, so what if I'm failing 11th grade, I still have my career waitressing at Denny's.

Romney expresses surprise at a touch screen. I'm willing to bet that (1) he's seen touch screens and (2) he's left utterly bored by the experience of seeing one applied, except to the extent it serves his purpose--getting elected and possibly scoping out investments.

Obama shows interest in photovoltaic cells when he probably has no clue what the photovoltaic effect is or what a semiconductor actually does--or the environmental side-effects in commercial silicon refining. It's to support a policy he likes for non-tech reasons and to get votes.

Don't confuse political display with real dismay. The only dismay Romney's likely to be really concerned with in the next 5 months are polls and election results.

[Buns_of_Fire]

25. aPads for only $230? Not bad, but I think I'll wait for them to drop below $175.

Which they will, as soon as the aPad 2 is introduced.

[JI7]

23. what's amazing about that ?