Tag: marketing

Exploring the Value of Personal Interaction in Today’s Digital World

January 20, 2026

At the local box store I visited, the young salesperson from Gujarat showed me a slew of laptops and described their capacities. He was very knowledgeable. In the ensuing conversation, I learned that he is a graduate student in engineering and has been seeking a permanent job while pursuing his studies. I prefer to make informed decisions, so I told him I’ll go home and review the computers he recommended online.

On driving home, I stopped at another box store and had a similar experience with another salesperson, another immigrant, this one from Africa. The computer sales personnel in both box stores were immigrants, to my surprise. Many immigrant students pursue studies in science and engineering and support themselves financially by selling technical products.

He showed me several suitable laptops: lightweight, with a terabyte of storage, lots of RAM, and a fast chip. My preferred model was only available as open box, with a 10% discount. I wanted to check online reviews and asked the salesperson to hold the open-box model overnight.

When I returned the next day to buy the model based on the good reviews, the Christmas sale was still on, but the open box model was unavailable. Instead, they found a new one and, after some discussion, offered me the same 10% discount due to their earlier promise.

While waiting to finalize the sale, I noticed a sign advertising the credit card for this box store. According to the ad, you get a 10% discount on your first purchase. Wow! I decided to get another credit card and filled out the paperwork to receive my additional 10% discount on the computer.

I thought about the process of buying a laptop, driving home. No question that I spent hours talking with numerous salespeople, a time-consuming process. But I learned from the conversations, and, more importantly, I enjoyed them. It was satisfying to speak with people rather than scan websites like Amazon and buy a laptop online.

Although a stretch, this experience contrasts with a recent coffee purchase at McDonald’s, where I just went up to the screen to order, then waited, and picked up the coffee at the counter without speaking to anyone. I found it much more satisfying to purchase merchandise by talking with people. But I understand that businesses may prefer cutting out people-to-people communication to streamline the sales process and speed up business transactions.

The other thought that crossed my mind was whether businesses like to cater to retired people who may have time on their hands to study promotions and sales.  They can be selective in their buying habits and are often more demanding customers than younger people with jobs and families.

On reflection, I found talking with people while transacting business was thoroughly satisfying. I wondered whether the trend to simplify business transactions by moving them online would have negative consequences for conversational skills and social interaction (I fail to see the digital world, or what is called social media, as a replacement for face-to-face contact, including Zoom). Remote work is gaining popularity, especially since Covid, and with consumer goods available online, one can stay home and get by without face-to-face interaction with the outside world for months. Would this trend lead to more isolation and loneliness?

How to Optimize Your iRobot Roomba for Efficient Cleaning

November 24, 2025

It was a typical Sunday morning. Kathy brewed some coffee, and then she and I scrolled through our iPhones, reading about the world’s problems, which put us in a negative mood. Instead, I suggested we leave reading the news and let Roomba, our iRobot, which we call Matilda, do some cleaning, and we have breakfast. Kathy agreed it was a good idea, so I switched the news channels on my iPhone to the Roomba app to start a “new job”. An iPhone is essential for accomplishing anything in today’s environment.

However, Matilda was in a cranky mood and sent me a voice message saying I needed to “blow out” the dirt from its previous job. It didn’t work at first; perhaps Matilda wasn’t quite awake. However, after ten minutes of troubleshooting accompanied by rich critical verbal expressions, I got it working. Listening to my running commentary on robots, AI, and techies, Kathy suggested a male name might be more fitting for our robot; a male’s early-morning grumpiness would more accurately reflects the robot’s behaviour this morning. So, we decided to rename the robot Mathis. The name was not a nod to Johnny Mathis; both of us are fans of his music.

But first, we had to clear the floor so Mathis could move around and clean. This meant putting the laundry basket, a few backpacks, slippers, and books lying on the floor onto the bed, in the bedroom. In the office, Kathy moved the office chair out of the way and the yoga equipment into another room. Finally, we were ready for Mathis to do his job.

Mathis struggled to navigate out of the dining room, which was full of obstructions. The room had five chairs and two tables, totaling twenty-eight legs that could interfere with Mathis’ movement. At one point, it seemed like he was lost as he moved back and forth, but he eventually found his way to the bedroom and the office. But his movements were inefficient overall, wasting significant battery power to reach the work sites.

For Mathis to work efficiently, it would be best to have an empty house with no furniture. Without obstacles like chair legs, he wouldn’t need to make detours and could make a clean sweep of the entire floor.

After some reflection, I decided to find a better home location for Mathis, with fewer obstructions on his way to reach the rooms in the house. A more central location in the house would avoid obstacles such as chair and table legs. So I moved Mathis’s home base to a new, central spot.

However, this change posed a potential problem: would Mathis feel at home in this new location after being accustomed to his previous spot? Are the floor plans in his memory tied to where he used to rest, or would he adjust and recognize the new location since he initially mapped our house from another place?

To test this new setup, I decided to give Mathis a “new job.” I asked him to clean the kitchen and the dining room after I turned all the chairs there upside down and placed them on the tables.

To see Mathis’s navigation skills in this new environment, I observed his movements. He seemed a bit lost at first, wandering around the living room before entering the dining room. However, he soon got to work, methodically cleaning the dining room by going back and forth, and then found the kitchen and cleaned it.

Overall, Mathis did an excellent job, and I considered rewarding him with a treat, such as a dog biscuit or candy, but how could I do it? This made me think that the brilliant designers of these robots should also provide rewards for good robotic behavior. Rewards could help robots learn from completed tasks and boost future performance.