A comment I left at John Tierney’s blog about the increased use of “smart elevators” in newly built skyscrapers such as the New York Times Building:
There are few more depressing sights than my daily walk to work in Midtown Manhattan in which I see, in the Twenty-First Century, traffic cops standing in intersections guiding vehicles in the same way they did in the 1920s and 1930s.Depressing because, if people were neither stupid nor inconsiderate, then the technology designed to render them obsolete (i.e., traffic lights) would succeed. But all it takes are a few stupid or inconsiderate people and the whole “intelligent” system collapses and we find ourselves needing to revert to “simplicity trumps efficiency.”
I have no doubt that the same will be true for “smart” elevators. The title of Mr. Tierney’s post ["Smart Elevators, Dumb People"] says it all.
P.S. How successful did “double-decker” elevators such as those at Citigroup Center and the Smith Barney Building in NYC prove to be? My experience in both building has been: “not very.”
I also suspect, however, that the ubiquitous presence of traffic cops at lighted intersections in New York City may merely be a police union boondoggle. Is there no escape from my cynicism?
1 response so far ↓
Link dolphin // Dec 21, 2007 at 9:29 am
Based on the article, I'm not understanding why "smart elevators" would be that difficult of a concept to grasp. Sounds to me like (on the interface side) they just moved the buttons from inside the elevator to the wall outside the elevator. You'd think any child could figure out that the buttons on the outside do the same thing as the buttons on the inside used to.