We live in a world where doing as little as possible to accomplish a task has become a trend and it’s understandable to see why: it saves on energy, resources and, most importantly, time that could otherwise be spent watching Downton Abbey. Consequently corporations everywhere are doing their best to bring you the next, best, hands-free, voice-free, literally-reads-your-brain-for-you capable product to ensure you waste as little energy as possible.
As a result, it’s common to see all sorts of automation ingrained in many aspects of our lives. What once started out in the form of elevators and travelators designed to move people from A to B without sweating too much has now diversified and seeped through all the cracks to cover even the little things such as automatic toothpaste dispensers (which are trickier to operate than they should be) to lights that turn on without you having to reach for the switch, further stroking the god complex we all try to hide. Even the once driverless cars of the future are now the self-driving cars of the present (Apparently many took the initial description too literally; numerous cars went to work with no one actually in them), designed to ensure we can squeeze in a few more minutes of sleep during our morning commutes, assuming you’re willing to place your life in the hands (or wheels) of inanimate object.
Oddly enough the one area that automation seems to have thoroughly penetrated are restrooms, bathrooms and other such facilities. For a place not many people spend that much time in, a surprisingly large amount of money has gone into designing machines and contraptions to ensure you don’t move around too much in there. From electric toothbrushes for those who find moving their arm an unnecessary inconvenience early in the morning all the way to automatic showers that start spraying water once they’ve detected that you’re in the splash zone, designed I assume for those of us suffering from a severe form of RSI. Even the holy sanctity of the toilet is no longer safe now that we have toilets that flush themselves once they’ve realised you’re no longer seated on them.
Now the ordinary person may argue that the seconds saved by each device could instead be devoted to the betterment of mankind. Unfortunately as a bit of a cynic it’s quite easy for me to see that, more often than not the ordinary person would probably just count those seconds as more time to sleep in late. To be honest I’m not entirely sure time is saved at all; those seconds we save over time are wasted away during the first few initial minutes of trying to figure out how to operate the damn devices.
