Out of touch
My alarm clock has a very special feature near and dear to my heart: a snooze feature. Now, you may want to say "but... Ed... all alarm clocks have a snooze button".
Bah.
My alarm clock has a snooze button too. But my alarm also has a snooze feature. What is this feature? A thermal sensor on the front of the alarm clock determines when your hand is being waved in front of the clock and it uses this motion to activate the snooze feature. So, this morning, I hit the snooze "feature" several times without ever touching the alarm clock.
As I went through my day I found myself in the restroom at work. I noticed that the toilet would flush without me needing to depress a lever.
Going to the washstand I was able to put soap on my hands by magically holding them underneath an automatic soap dispenser.
I washed my hands under a faucet that automatically turned on water.
I then retrieved paper to dry my hands from a sensor-driven paper dispenser.
I can trigger alarms, throw switches, turn on lights, get soap and water and flush toilets for nothing more than a wave of the hand. Of course, sometimes the sensors don't pick up that first (or second, or third) wave, as was also the case today.
So, I am in front of a paper towel dispenser, trying to dry my hands on paper towels, waving like mad to make this machine acknowledge my presence. It was a fast wave. An ugly wave.The kind of wave an over-protective parent waves to their child when they board their first bus to school... running down the sidewalk after the bus... calling the kid's name...not looking where they are going... wax on... wax off... yeah, it was one of those waves. I doubt the Queen of England would get such handily dispensed paper towels with her far subtler wave.
Having air-dried my hand long before this machine dispensed adequate paper products I couldn't help but ponder the looming tsunami of sensors and how they were slowly pushing my out of touch with the things around me. Sorry, call me old-school, but I want my cause and effect to be more tactile. One day, I fear, my hands will evolve into more efficient sensor-triggering flippers.
At what point do we stop living life and start simply conducting it? How near is the time when my hands will move frantically up and down, left and right, orchestrating the motion of the automatons surrounding me?
At what level of abstraction do we just go numb?
Clearly, we are not at that point yet as I have waved my hands over the "generate interesting blog" sensor repeatedly and this is all that has spit out so far. So, I will nod in the general direction of the "save blog" sensor, blink at the monitor power button, and clap my hands until this chair carries me into bed.
---
As it is past midnight -- another late night! -- please make note of the scene that will play out in the morning: At 7am the alarm will go off and I will be somewhere buried deep under covers. A single t-shirted arm will stick out from underneath this pile and wave in wild arcs in what, I will hope, is the general vicinity of my alarm clock. Linda, who gets up before me, has observed days where my wild arm gyrations get no-where near the alarm clock. Many has been the morning where my clock's cresendoing buzzer induced a humorous escalation of arm flailing.
Apparently, twice, I have almost knocked out a cat.
-Ed
Bah.
My alarm clock has a snooze button too. But my alarm also has a snooze feature. What is this feature? A thermal sensor on the front of the alarm clock determines when your hand is being waved in front of the clock and it uses this motion to activate the snooze feature. So, this morning, I hit the snooze "feature" several times without ever touching the alarm clock.
As I went through my day I found myself in the restroom at work. I noticed that the toilet would flush without me needing to depress a lever.
Going to the washstand I was able to put soap on my hands by magically holding them underneath an automatic soap dispenser.
I washed my hands under a faucet that automatically turned on water.
I then retrieved paper to dry my hands from a sensor-driven paper dispenser.
I can trigger alarms, throw switches, turn on lights, get soap and water and flush toilets for nothing more than a wave of the hand. Of course, sometimes the sensors don't pick up that first (or second, or third) wave, as was also the case today.
So, I am in front of a paper towel dispenser, trying to dry my hands on paper towels, waving like mad to make this machine acknowledge my presence. It was a fast wave. An ugly wave.The kind of wave an over-protective parent waves to their child when they board their first bus to school... running down the sidewalk after the bus... calling the kid's name...not looking where they are going... wax on... wax off... yeah, it was one of those waves. I doubt the Queen of England would get such handily dispensed paper towels with her far subtler wave.
Having air-dried my hand long before this machine dispensed adequate paper products I couldn't help but ponder the looming tsunami of sensors and how they were slowly pushing my out of touch with the things around me. Sorry, call me old-school, but I want my cause and effect to be more tactile. One day, I fear, my hands will evolve into more efficient sensor-triggering flippers.
At what point do we stop living life and start simply conducting it? How near is the time when my hands will move frantically up and down, left and right, orchestrating the motion of the automatons surrounding me?
At what level of abstraction do we just go numb?
Clearly, we are not at that point yet as I have waved my hands over the "generate interesting blog" sensor repeatedly and this is all that has spit out so far. So, I will nod in the general direction of the "save blog" sensor, blink at the monitor power button, and clap my hands until this chair carries me into bed.
---
As it is past midnight -- another late night! -- please make note of the scene that will play out in the morning: At 7am the alarm will go off and I will be somewhere buried deep under covers. A single t-shirted arm will stick out from underneath this pile and wave in wild arcs in what, I will hope, is the general vicinity of my alarm clock. Linda, who gets up before me, has observed days where my wild arm gyrations get no-where near the alarm clock. Many has been the morning where my clock's cresendoing buzzer induced a humorous escalation of arm flailing.
Apparently, twice, I have almost knocked out a cat.
-Ed
posted by Ed at 12:11 AM
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