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Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to review and critically evaluate robots, artificial intelligence and service automation (RAISA) applications in the restaurant industry to educate professors, graduate students, and industry professionals.

Design/methodology/approach: This chapter is a survey of applications of RAISA in restaurants. The chapter is based on the review of professional and peer-reviewed academic literature, and the industry insight section was prepared based on a 50-minute interview with Mr. Juan Higueros, Chief Operations Officer of Bear Robotics.

Findings: Various case studies presented in this chapter illustrate numerous possibilities for automation: from automating a specific function to complete automation of the front of the house (e.g., Eatsa) or back of the house (e.g., Spyce robotic kitchen). The restaurant industry has already adopted chatbots; voice-activated and biometric technologies; robots as hosts, food runners, chefs, and bartenders; tableside ordering; conveyors; and robotic food delivery.

Practical implications: The chapter presents professors and students with a detailed overview of RAISA in the restaurant industry that will be useful for educational and research purposes. Restaurant owners and managers may also benefit from reading this chapter as they will learn about the current state of technology and opportunities for RAISA implementation.

Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this chapter presents the first systematic and in-depth review of RAISA technologies in the restaurant industry.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states in 2018 that safeguarding “civil liberties is critical” to their official duties. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within DHS, as its website explains,

reviews and assesses complaints from the public in areas such as: physical or other abuse; discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability; inappropriate conditions of confinement; infringements of free speech; violation of right to due process … and any other civil rights or civil liberties violation related to a Department program or activity.

My chapter tracks the centrality of deportability in shaping the civil liberties and rights that DHS is tasked with enforcing. Over the course of the twentieth century, people on US soil saw an expanding list of civil liberties and civil rights. Important scholarship concentrates on the role of the courts, state and federal governments, advocacy groups, social movements, and foreign policy driving these constitutional and cultural changes. For instance, the scholarship illustrates that coming out of World War I, the US Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did not protect something the Justices labeled “irresponsible speech.” The Supreme Court soon changed course, opening up an era ever since of more robust First Amendment rights. What has not been undertaken in the literature is an examination of the relationship of deportability to the sweep of civil liberties and civil rights. Starting in the second decade of the twentieth century, federal immigration policymakers began multiplying types of immigration statuses. A century later, among many others, there is the H2A status for temporary low-wage workers, the H2B for skilled labor, and permanent residents with green cards. The deportability of each status constrains access to certain liberties and rights. Thus, in 2016, when people from the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within DHS act, they are not enforcing a uniform body of rights and liberties that applies equally to citizens and immigrants, or even within the large category of immigrants. Instead, they do so within a complicated matrix of liberties and rights attenuated by deportability, which has been shaped by the history of the twentieth century.

The main goal of the paper is to explore the origins and developments of the first community cellular network in Mexico.

Data were gathered in 2015 and 2016 through in-depth interviews, participant observation, workshops, photos, official documents, and informal interviews in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Data was also drawn from the work of two activists, P. Bloom and E. Huerta, working with the community assemblies of a number of Indígena communities: Villa Talea de Castro, Santa María Yaviche, San Juan Yaee, San Ildefonso Villa Alta, San Bernardo Mixetepec, Santa Ana Tlahuitoltepec, San Jerónimo Progreso, Santiago Ayuquililla, San Miguel Huautla, Santa Inés de Zaragoza, Santo Domingo Xagacia, San Pablo Yaganiza, San Pedro Cajonos, San Francisco Cajonos, San Miguel Cajonos, San Mateo Cajonos, Santa María Alotepec, and San Juan Tabaá. To analyze the data, using codes created in Atlas.TI and relying on an inductive approach, we analyzed the history of this network within a theoretical framework informed by Actor-Network Theory.

Participants in the enactment of this cellular network followed two programs of actions, one technical and one legal. Together, the community assemblies and activists took advantage of available devices, free software and ordinary computers, on the one hand, and communal rules, national laws, constitutional reforms and tacit knowledge, on the other hand. They brought about a new, non-profit, communitarian, and self-organized network that allows for inexpensive communication between members of small, marginalized Indígena communities in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico.

The arrangement of actants that the case illustrates is replicable in other parts of the country and outside of Mexico. The new community cellular network reduces the economic costs of communication, facilitates some jobs and family bonds, expands the range of community-owned projects, encourages self-organization and ways of situated conflict resolution, and empowers communities in relation to external powerful telecommunication corporations.

This is a novel account of a highly unusual set of community-led institutional innovations based on firsthand information drawn from the main actants of the new network.