There is absolutely a third way. Combine the best parts of your local farmers market (fresh produce grown locally and organically) with the best parts of your mega-grocery (selection, constant stock of in-season products).

The fact is, we're paying way too little money in the grocery store for fresh produce. If we weren't using cheap labor and mega farms to produce it, you'd be paying a higher price for your produce that is actually reflective of the true cost. Encourage small farm ownership, and discourage subsidies to farmers for not growing. Encourage purchasing food locally through tax subsidies to grocery chains who purchase products within a certain radius of their stores.

Eliminate Mega Food Distributors and go back to Family Farms. I guarantee, we'll get the best of both worlds. I could still do without the cart with the TV in it though.

Perhaps the cart might offer some advice on what to do with the turnips?

Couldn't you ask the farmer this? I'd bet that some farmers could even tell you what their carbon footprint is. They could also tell you the wage of the migrant workers they hire (if any).

These glittery new shopping carts seem to want to bring back a personalized touch to the shopping experience, but if that's what you are after, then shouldn't you be going to farmer's markets?

As I read through this article I kept waiting for the mention of privacy concerns, ie now Microsoft or Safeway or your-favorite-evil-flavor now knows what you buy. Yet there is no mention of privacy concerns.

The lack of paranoia from this post worries me.

"I wonder -- is there a third way? A dreamscape where farmer's markets and artificially intelligent shopping carts coexist in loopy harmony? Perhaps the cart might offer some advice on what to do with the turnips?"

There is--it's called Organic Express (there are similar services available, but that's the one I subscribe to in LA). You can just let them assemble you a box of whatever local organic produce they have that week, or you can log on, look at the list of this week's produce, figure out what you might make with it, and order what you need. They even include a weekly recipe with your delivery.

However, the real issue with these "smart" shopping carts is---puh-leese, you want me to TYPE a shopping list into the computer before I go to the market? I'm lucky if I show up with a cryptically scribbled scrap of paper listing the ingredients I seem to recall might belong in a recipe I'm vaguely thinking of making if I have the time.

Shopping for groceries seems like it should be the simplest, easiest thing in the world to do. It's something that you teach your children how to do as they grow up--how to pick ripe fruit, how to ask for a cut of meat.

Shopping for food in this country is a nightmare. Even in a city like Seattle, finding a way to put good food on your plate is terribly difficult.

Here's what I do--not because it's the best or the cheapest, but it's how I get what I need. (Note: I have three large breed dogs that eat a raw foods diet and my wife has severe food allergies to everything except beef, pork, chicken, milk and eggs. She's on lots of drugs so she can eat other things, but honey, raw tomatoes, peanuts, tree nuts, poppy and sesame seeds, and apples all send her into anaphylaxis.)

1. Go to the small, independent neighborhood grocery in the neighborhood my wife used to live in--it's more than 7 miles away, but we don't have one in our neighborhood. The owner is a friend of ours, and he saves his butcher trimmings to give us for free and sells us chicken backs to feed our dogs at super low prices. I always get wine, cheese, some odds and ends and a good snack while I'm there.

2. Go to the produce market in the neighborhood next to mine (mine doesn't have one of these, either). Here, I get fruits and vegetables for cheap. CHEAP! No, it's not all local or all organic. But they have local, they have organic, and their prices are better than anywhere. Less than twenty dollars buys all the fruits and vegetables we need for a week.

3. Go to the large chain grocery store (also not in my neighborhood), and shop the perimeter of the store--produce, bakery, meats and seafood, dairy, deli. I wish that we had a real butcher that i could afford that always had local, grass fed beef, free-range local chicken, and fresh, never-frozen seafood. When we can afford it, we go to the butcher's and fish mongers in Pike's Market, but that's rare.

So, until my neighborhood overcomes some of its blight and it's run-down buildings have real stores in them, I travel much, much more than I want for decent food that I can afford.

Until my income actually equals the work I do (I am an architect) and I can actually make enough money to do better than just scrape by, this is how it has to be.

Honestly, I don't give a f*ck about hi-tech shopping carts. If they aren't going to help me make better food choices or help me find out how to eat better for less money, they might as well just put video poker or a damn slot machine in the cart.

The problem is the advertiser's lack of information. Perhaps if they knew my exact age, annual income, height, weight, my shopping list, products bought on which day, the exact amount of time spent pondering a tomato purchase in the produce aisle, the items put into the cart and removed on second thought, and on and on, perhaps then they could produce an exact model of my buying behavior. Then they would realize that I'm not going to buy any of the crap they advertise under any circumstances and they should just play my favorite type of music instead.