Technology

Personally, I'm just not impressed by "touchless" stuff, like papertowel dispensers, trashcans, etc.  I've heard the arguments for touchless papertowel dispensers (disease control), but that kind of goes out the door when you touch the next door knob now doesn't it?  The touchless papertowel dispenser we have at my office says "Motion Activated".  You know what else is motion activated?  A friggin' lever.  What was wrong with the lever anyways?  Were people really contracting diseases enough to justify the existence of this technological twaddle?  Or is the lever too antiquated?  Or are we just obsessed with plugging everything in? 

So, in some places you'll find a motion activated toilet (but not toilet paper - or toilet tissue as some supercilious people quaintly refer to it as - dispenser), a motion activated sink spiggot, a motion activated paper towel dispenser or air dryer, but no motion activated bathroom door.  So, now we have one more thing that runs off of electricity that didn't need it in the first place.  (I know..."That's your opinion."  Yes, yes it is.  That's a very nice observation you made.  Do you not have any?)

We also had an iTouchless trashcan that went kaput after about a year or two, and for the last several months we had it the stupid door wouldn't lift so you could put trash in it.  Some touchless trashcan.  Yep, it was a touchless trashcan, until you had to change out the trashbag.  It was more deserving of the "touchless" title after it made it to the dumpster.  (Now we've got a Simple Human trashcan (that probably cost $120...it's an empty cylinder with a lid...come on) whose lid won't open via the foot-lever; the lid must by manually opened by your hand.  It's been like this for months, and we still have it.  Nobody knows why we still have it.  But that's a separate discussion.)

Yeah, the same people that buy into these touchless things (or otherwise justify their existence) are the same people that pick their nose but don't wash their hands afterwards, or never sanitize their cell phones and every other little thing around them. 

My point is that sometimes we have too much technology around us.  While technology still amazes us with things that are legitimately useful, other times something gets a dose of technological superfluousness that makes some of us wonder "why?".