So perhaps, for a glimpse of the future, we should look not to Rosie the Robot but to another device now being used in warehouses—the Jennifer unit. It’s a headset that tells human workers what to do, down to the smallest detail; if you have to pick nineteen identical items from a shelf, it will tell you to pick five, then five, then five, then four . . . which leads to fewer errors than if you were told “Pick nineteen.”