VOICES: Skip the bank: Robots connecting humans

Banks ain’t what they used to be — and you can take that generalization to the bank. The thing is, we aren’t taking much, including ourselves, to the bank anymore. Although new banks keep springing up, they’re mostly office buildings.

Fewer and fewer customers actually go inside a bank these days. We might use the ATM or drive-up lane after work, but that’s as close as many of us get to the building. Increasingly, the brick-and-mortar bank is an anachronism.

Opinion: Robots connecting humans

The transition from physical to virtual presence has been easier to accomplish for banks than for many other businesses. Although we like the convenience of buying goods online, there’s a definite tradeoff for some purchases — not being able to try on that blouse or pair of shoes, for example. But money has always been something of an abstraction, and as plastic increasingly replaces cash it will become even more so, giving banks a leg up in the conversion of our economy to bits and bytes.

Online banking joins self-checkout lanes and pay-at-the-pump gas stations as supposed win-win situations for both consumers and business owners. They don’t have to employ as many tellers and cashiers, while we can conduct our business faster. Computerization and self-help are the watchwords in our relentless march to greater independence and efficiency.

But since we’re talking about the economy here, it’s worth asking what’s lost, as well as what’s gained, in the new world order.

An obvious casualty is human contact. When you log onto your bank account from home or work, you don’t need to talk with a teller. You also don’t run into a neighbor in the lobby. Waiting in line is an anathema for modern urbanites; we just don’t have the time. Yet lobbies and lines represent diminishing opportunities to encounter other people in an environment conducive to conversation. And human interaction is the glue that holds a civilization together.

Conducting business isn’t the only opportunity to meet people, of course. For many of us, the office also serves that purpose. But there too, technological inroads have encroached on a face-to-face world.

The work space in many old-fashioned offices was an open room. Higher-ups had private offices, but the grunt work of the business was accomplished in an undivided space where there was minimal privacy but many opportunities to overhear and exchange casual conversation. Some of that conversation might have been deemed extraneous to the business at hand, but some of it certainly enriched the final product that everyone was working on.

Open work rooms in most businesses gave way to cubicles, an attempt to maximize floor space while affording more privacy. Telecommuting was the next logical step in the process. Employees work in the privacy of a home office; employers don’t need to provide any space at all.

But telecommuting, many people have found, is a mixed blessing. In a business where some people still come into the office, the telecommuter can be perceived as an outsider — or even worse, forgotten about. Out of sight, out of mind.

Fortunately, when technology creates a problem, it offers a solution. Witness the ConnectR, which its manufacturer calls a “virtual visiting robot.” The ConnectR has audio and video capability and can be controlled from a remote site by computer keyboard, mouse or joystick. So you can drop in on a colleague even if you’re at home, just by sending the company-owned robot down the hall to her office. Its camera enables you to see her, and the microphone lets you talk with each other.

Although the ConnectR has obvious business applications, it’s being marketed primarily as way to keep up with what’s going on at home. The company’s Web site (www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=338) urges consumers to “stay close to those you love — no matter where you are,” touting the robot’s usefulness in checking up on children and pets in one’s absence.

So there you have it: a new way to reach out and touch someone, without the inconvenience of actual contact. Is this a great country or what?