Vending Machines For Tech Sluts
In malls and airports, giant, beguiling glass boxes ply you with iPods and RAZRs. Is this heaven?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, October 4, 2006


No one seems to be quite sure what to make of these things, these giant shiny gorgeous nightmare boxes of consumer-sucking bliss, these beautiful massive vending machines custom built to dispense iPods and Motorola RAZRs and Sony PSPs, XM radios and noise-canceling headphones and all related accessories, machines that are distributed by an evil genius company called [link|http://www.zoomsystems.com/|Zoom Systems] right here in San Francisco.

Have you seen? Do you already know? Have you already been, in equal turns, excited and horrified and nonplussed as you passed on by one of these Zoom Shops, these gorgeous, glorified, ultramodern vending machines, these sleek hunks of casual tech excess now being installed in various airports and department stores and hotels all over this fine country and luring unwary shoppers over to their gleaming orifices of effortless tech gluttony?

Or did you simply stroll right on by, shaking your head as you pined for the old days of rotary phones and LP records and authentic human interaction, wondering where our sense of genuine wonder hath gone and whatever happened to the idea that purchasing something that costs upward of 300 bucks should be at least a moderately precious and rousing experience?

Well, too bad for you. Because no matter what you think of the idea, this is the future. These striking credit-sucking boxes, which began to trickle into the public consciousness about a year ago and each of which houses somewhere around 30 grand's worth of top-notch tech wizardry, are set to take over the impulse-buy marketplace, with Zoom reportedly planning to install 10,000 of the things over the next couple years from here to Europe and selling everything from to iPod Nanos to Moto SLVRs to Bluetooth headphones to high-end health and beauty supplies to, well, whatever the hell else they can think of.

And yes, it's a genius idea. Evil, and genius, wonderful and weird, tremendously cool and bitterly isolating all at once. After all, what better way to appeal to a gadget-crazed nation than to sell cool gadgets from inside another cool giant gadget? It's like watching a porn movie while you're making a porn movie. It's like a shot of Maker's Mark with a Red Tail back. It's like a free cup of coffee with your line of crystal meth. It's so meta, it licks your brain.

It is also the perfect invention for an increasingly alienated, detached consumer culture. There are no lines, no checking of inventory, no shipping charges, no excess packing materials, no browsing. Like shopping on the Net, there is no pesky human interaction when you buy from a Zoom machine. Unlike the Net, you can't really shop naked at 3 a.m., drunk on cheap wine and listening to old Iron Maiden while downloading porn in the background. What you get instead: no waiting. You want a new iPod? A new Motorola Moto Q? You got it. In about 15 seconds. It's all climax, zero annoying foreplay.

It is also, quite clearly, the shape of things to come. These Zoom boxes are all about class and design and money. There ain't no Doritos Extreme Ranch Fun Size in here, baby. Sure, Japan may an old hand at hawking weird, random crap from tacky neon vending machines, but these things are clearly a new genus of consumer nirvana, a prime indicator that our instant-gratification culture is just beginning to hit its stride.

And truly, there is nothing more instantly gratifying than swiping your exhausted debit card through that enticing little slot and choosing your delicious gizmo poison and then watching the magical robotic arm sweep over and grab a shiny black 80GB iPod and delicately transport it over to the little dispenser window.

And the door slides door open and you reach into the life-giving orifice and extract your luscious new fetish object and the machine seems to smile and the gizmo gods grin and the Earth sighs in faint plasticky pain and it all takes less than a minute and you quickly feel an overwhelming Vegas slot machine-like urge to do it again, and again, and again.

Of course, it won't last long. The hot novelty of buying a $200 SLVR cell phone from a sexy vending machine will wear off as soon as everyone becomes accustomed to having their debit card mauled and as soon as the things are as ubiquitous as Starbucks and as soon as everyone realizes it's often more fun to be drunk and naked when you shop. Or maybe that's just me.

Meantime, tech geeks are in a tiny bit of a swoon over the Zoom machines. There is a [link|http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2348-10877_11-6054846-1.html|shred of buzz], to the point where \ufffdbergeeks have even posted [link|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OokewShzSH4|amateur video clips] on YouTube and Engadget and Gizmodo of themselves buying something from the machine. Wait, [link|http://crunchgear.com/2006/09/27/crappy-video-of-motorola-vending-machine/| a lousy cell-phone video clip] of a high-tech gizmo that sells cell phones that take lousy video clips? Now that's meta.

It's like a grainy video of a drug deal. You can veritably [link|http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/motorola-testing-phone-vending-machines-202346.php|feel the anticlimactic joy] in one of the clips as the guy swipes his card and watches in wonder as the mechanized arm delivers his overpriced Sony headphones, and he reaches in and pulls them out and holds up the package and says, "Wow, that was easy," and then ... well, nothing.

Nothing else happens. No bells chime and no salesperson smiles and no one says, "Have a nice day," and the guy is instantly 50 bucks poorer and he looks around as if to say: "Wait, that's it? Am I done? Should I do it again or something?"

To which the machine only smiles, coldly, and hums on

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes another tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts.

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