subject.cz/josef

I got stuck in the lift this morning and it was not for the first time during the last few weeks. We have a nice, modern lift in the appartment building where I live. It has a fancy dashboard, with 2-digit display. Whenever you touch a button, it responds with ‘beep’. You can even enter negative numbers in there (there are 4 floors above the ground and 2 beneath). If you enter a number out of the range (like -3) the display shows ‘Er’ (means Error) and patiently awaits your next command. Doors open and close automatically. There has to be a computer in it.

Today, I was in my usual morning rush. I got into cabin and pressed the ‘0′ button, because I wanted to go to the ground floor. The ‘0′ appeared on the display, the computer responded with ‘beep’ and the doors closed as usual. I was expecting the lift to start moving down, but that’s not what the computer wanted. He rather opened the doors again and then he closed them. He repeated this several times and then he closed the doors for the last time and turned off the display. I was standing there, trying to press the buttons. Nothing. No beeps. The computer obviously crashed and I got stuck in there.

After several minutes, the computer went back on, judging from the buttons which I was punching with my fist at that time started to beep again. I got out of the berserk mode and carefully pressed ‘0′ again. The lift has started to move. I was saved.

In the previous house where I lived, there was a also a lift. It was quite an old-fashioned lift. You had to manually close the doors and when you pressed the button, it didn’t play any sound - it simply started moving. You couldn’t enter a number which would be outside of range, because each floor in the building had it’s own, unique button. I used to be living there for about 20 years. I remember the lift not working like 5 times during that whole period. It had no display, no beeps, no computers. 99,9999999% uptime. That was cool.

Mankind has been using elevators for centuries . There were no computers in them and it was good. In the beginning, some of these lifts may have killed a few people, but we have learned how to make them better, safer and more reliable with less and less casaulties every year. Everything worked just fine.
Then, at the very end of 2nd millenium, someone highly incompetent but responsible for innovation in some unnamed elevator company has decided, that adding a computer into their high-tech product line may be a cool idea. Since then, computer-enhanced lifts have flooded the market.
I hope that guy has died by hunger, stuck for weeks in one of his frankenstein elevators.

Staring today, I am changing my ‘One line Bio’. I am adding ‘I hate computers’ to it. Because I really do. Not all computers, you know? Only those, which are somewhere where they shouldn’t be, where they don’t belong to. Like unwanted visitors - sitting on a chair, drinking your coffee, talking crap and stealing your precious time. Hours of your precious time. Days of your precious time. Shortening your lives, piece by piece, eating your nerves.

I hate computers in elevators.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 9:55 am and is filed under hitech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.