Because things break down, it's good to have a manual override. You know, at least as an option.
A building I've spent time in recently has automatic faucets that run on sensors. You run your hand underneath and water comes out.
Except sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the sink can't read that there's a pair of hands in it that need to be washed. And the crazy thing is, if one sink goes on the fritz like this, you can tell that every sink in the building is doing the same thing.
That's why I think engineers should make sure all these clever automated devices have ways they can still be used in the event of power or other failure. Call it the Mitch Hedberg Escalator Principle.
A building I've spent time in recently has automatic faucets that run on sensors. You run your hand underneath and water comes out.
Except sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the sink can't read that there's a pair of hands in it that need to be washed. And the crazy thing is, if one sink goes on the fritz like this, you can tell that every sink in the building is doing the same thing.
That's why I think engineers should make sure all these clever automated devices have ways they can still be used in the event of power or other failure. Call it the Mitch Hedberg Escalator Principle.
2 comments:
I like his idea that escalators can never break down because they simply become temporary stairs. Still, there are far more techy things that can break down and do like your example of automatic faucets.
Even scarier, and something we've talked about more than once is the fact that you can't buy food when the electric power fails because all the cash registers (they're still called that, but cash has little to do with them these days) won't work. Not only that but the scanners won't work either and neither will the card readers. It wouldn't surprise me if the doors won't open either. It seems to me that allowing for redundancy would have been a wiser course.
I'm not even going to mention bitcoins etc.
A widespread power shortage would indeed play havoc with a number of stores. They obviously want to sell food, people want to buy food, but they can't without the purchase being coded into the register/computer. At the outside you could be looking at riots. And there may actually be plans to quell said riots, not necessarily in a peaceful fashion. Plans that have been made but if it actually comes to that no one's going to be happy.
As for Bitcoin and the like, well, basically it's a Ponzi scheme for the digital age.
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