Poll: Technology has failed us

[SantoUno]

The majority of the bathrooms at my university have automatic devices (toilets, sinks, and dispensers for the soap and paper towels) that sense motion to be activated. Well I always thought that this is really a bad idea and I was damn right.

This morning I kept waving my hand in the first sink and neither the water or soap came out, so I used the one to the right. Then after that I did the same thing for the paper towel dispenser and it didn't work! I had to get toilet paper to dry my hands.

This is quite annoying because it really doesn't take much effort to manually rinse our hands, dispense soap and pull a lever to dispense paper towels, yet it feels like so many places want to seem modern and make everything automatic and only function that way.

And this is obviously not just limited to bathrooms. What if one day the automatic doors at your local grocery store don't open? How can anyone enter? How can anyone inside get out? There might me emergency doors but you can't fall back on those to let customers enter the store.

If you ask me, I think that institutions should just stick to manual devices, and if they really want to use automatic devices that badly, they should install some that allow you to use both methods (manual and automatic) to use that device.

Also if anyone wants to provide another example of failed technology feel free to.

 

[Pimppeter2]

We still have bananas.

 

[Starnerf]

You have automatic paper towel dispensers? Why not jut use air driers? Though automatics are more for sanitation and cost efficiency rather than ease of use. Fewer people touching a surface = less chance of spreading germs.

 

[fyrsten]

first thread is wonderfully illogical and gets 10 e-peen

Otherwise YES! this is the service era, but the damn machines wont even recognize me, so i get no service and get snobbed by a machine FML

 

[Ironic Pirate]

We don't have paper towels. At all. Or toilet paper. And only (yes I started a sentence with and Mrs. Courdes)one working (manual) sink.

 

[SantoUno]

You have automatic paper towel dispensers? Why not jut use air driers? Though automatics are more sanitation as well as cost efficiency. Fewer people touching a surface = less chance of spreading germs.

I said the bathrooms in my university have them, not me in my house, I'm not made of money.

Air dries can be just as bad, they also use motion sensing so they can also fail.

As for the germs thing, people just washed their hands, what is the risk?

 

[teisjm]

The problem is when they add "fancy tech" for the sake of adding fancy tech, and it doesn't really make thing easier or better in any way.
Like soap dispensers, water-taps and paper-towel dispensers.

 

[Jark212]

Voice recognition is the only technology that has truly failed me, The tech your talking about is kind of a minor inconvenience...

 

[cynicalandbored]

Lots of technology's pointless and either doesn't perform the function it's supposed to or only does it marginally better than its manual counterpart. On the other hand, without working technology you'd have had to post this in a newspaper, on a church bulletin board, or use smoke signals to ask your question, and we'd all have to write our carefully considered replies on heavy paper sealed with wax. So technology hasn't failed us, just the menial stuff we can probably do without anyway. If people are too lazy to get themselves a paper towel then they shouldn't be allowed one.

 

[Starnerf]

You have automatic paper towel dispensers? Why not jut use air driers? Though automatics are more sanitation as well as cost efficiency. Fewer people touching a surface = less chance of spreading germs.

I said the bathrooms in my university have them, not me in my house, I'm not made of money.

Air dries can be just as bad, they also use motion sensing so they can also fail.

As for the germs thing, people just washed their hands, what is the risk?

Well, mainly for the faucets and soap dispensers, as you haven't washed your hands prior to touching them. Automatic towel dispensers are just weird, but I guess it helps with people using a ream of paper to dry their hands. Or maybe it doesn't.

 

[Halceon]

Technology has yet to fail me. Devices are not technology, you know, they are implementations. Technology will have failed us if there is no workable alternative by the time we get to the oil crash.

 

[grimsprice]

Technology has yet to fail me. Devices are not technology, you know, they are implementations. Technology will have failed us if there is no workable alternative by the time we get to the oil crash.

Actually there are workable alternatives. We're just waiting for the crash to make them profitably marketable.

OT: I have this magical "work damn it" field around me. I un-red-ringed my friends xbox just by talking to it.

And the voice recognition software that comes with vista for free worked perfectly for me. Idk, maybe i'm just magic but everything works fine around me. Including automatic sinks and towel dispensers.

 

[x0ny]

Automate reduces cross contamination, which is a bit weird considering we're washing our hand anyway... Plus Dyson hand dryer > all

 

[Avaholic03]

The reliability of technology is increasing. Remember when you couldn't bump a CD player because it would skip? Now you can shake the shit out of it (assuming you don't have a MP3 player instead).

I don't see a problem with using these new devices. In most cases, there are manual overrides (on doors, toilets, etc.).

 

[ribonuge]

Bring back the Penny-farthing!

Spoiler

 

[Spirultima]

We still have bananas.

This answer has solved countless questions, it yet again proves its superiority.

 

[Halceon]

Technology has yet to fail me. Devices are not technology, you know, they are implementations. Technology will have failed us if there is no workable alternative by the time we get to the oil crash.

Actually there are workable alternatives. We're just waiting for the crash to make them profitably marketable.

Oh, there most definitely are, but i include market pressures and green activists into my current definition of workable. As it stands, there is replacement tech in areas that consume oil the most, namely, electric power and propulsion, yet nuclear plants are being shut down, despite being one of the cleanest forms of electricity generation and electric cars are mostly ignored by manufacturers.

 

[clankwise]

I just hate those automatics sink and paper dispense. The sink last for 5 seconds then i have to wave my hand again then again then again then again then again then again then again........

 

[Souplex]

I agree, but the reason they do it is not because it is more modern or easier, it is because we have slipped so far a a society that people cannot be trusted to flush the toilet or turn the water off.