Something about glass houses and throwing stones comes to mind. You are using this technology wrong if you think the comparison is manually shopping from a paper list in an app. You can use your voice assistant on your phone to add things to your cart on Walmart, so rather than do something as antiquated as writing a list down, as you run low on things you tell Siri/Google to add them to your Walmart cart. You can do the same thing with Alexa and Amazon/Whole Foods.

So rather than keeping a paper list that you need to shop for later, your list has been transformed into a filled shopping cart ready to check out without having to type or scroll at all, or virtually walk down an aisle.

These apps also make it very easy to access and reorder items you regularly buy. Again, if your argument is VR shopping is easier than shopping on a tiny phone screen, you're using those apps wrong.

quote:
Its easier to see 1,000 items in person vs a page that can only show 10-100 items at a time and consist of hundreds of pages.

Now this I can agree with, and there are times where you would want to virtually shop like that. The smart phone is a double edged sword. You are always able to use it no matter where you are, but by becoming the primary device we access the digital world with, the experience has its limitations.

As for the OP's question, I don't know what home tech is coming next. Most people predicted our phones getting ever smaller until the iPhone came along and changed everything.

What we do know is coming is AI. Not the big "general intelligence" that will kill us all one day, but we are seeing a rise of narrowly focused AI on the verge of being ready for prime time that will make amazing things when they are layered on top of each other.

For example, GPT3 is a language AI, think chat bots where you ask it questions and it gives answers. The next version, GPT4 is coming out soon and reportedly is very good at passing turing tests and fooling people into thinking it's human. LINK / Combine GPT4 with AI voice recognition that can detect our mood by analyzing our voice, and you can build a responsive virtual personal assistant. Basically Siri will get several steps closer to Scarlett Johansson in the movie Her.

We also have seen quite a bit of progress this year in AI that generates art, photos and even video from text prompts. Can't find anything to watch on Netflix? 5-10 years from now Netflix's "Surprise Me" button might be able to digitally create a show from scratch, on the fly based on what you like to watch.

This post was edited on 11/15/22 at 8:27 am