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Most people are familiar with the concept through online shopping with services such as Amazon Prime.

Shoppers go to a store’s website, click the “place order” button to purchase items that are billed to a credit card linked to their account, and a package arrives on their doorstep, maybe even on the same day.

The trend is to extend that simplicity across all retail.

“Everyone is focused on automating the payment process,” said Faletski, whose business builds ecommerce platforms for retailers to use.

But this means eliminating points of contact between people, which has the power not only to alter the experience of consumers but to shape the nature of work itself.

Replacing those contacts with automation and artificial intelligence shifts where the jobs are in commerce, potentially eliminating whole classes of employment before it is entirely clear if workers will have comparable jobs to move to, experts worry.

It also threatens to increase the so-called digital divide between those who are adept with technology — and can afford the smart phones, computers and data plans that go along with it — and those who aren’t, especially seniors who also face increasing issues with social isolation.

Automation can contribute to social isolation

“I think we’re still grappling with what the implications are of taking the human element out of some of these transactions,” said Kendra Strauss, director of the labour studies program at SFU’s Morgan Centre for Labour Research.