5 ms·

Sour grapes? I recall when push button elevators were installed. The union insisted an operator was still needed - who asked you 'what floor?' and then pushed t

Sour grapes? I recall when push button elevators were installed. The union insisted an operator was still needed - who asked you 'what floor?' and then pushed that button. Without operators, western, and indeed all global civilization would come to an end...

Semirhage 8y ago
When push-button elevators were installed, they worked. Can you imagine if the pitch had been, “sometimes this elevator will kill the odd person, thanks for helping us work out the bugs.” As a bonus, the actual working elevator might not emerge until decades after installation began, and the early models only worked on alternate Wednesday’s.
- regulation_d 8y ago
  This might be a valid point if the current system of driving wasn’t already killing millions of people per year.
  - sverige 8y ago
    "Millions" is an overstatement. Annual deaths worldwide are around 1.25 million. And deaths in the U.S. have declined significantly from their peak in the '70s. All of that begs the question of whether autonomous cars will save lives. It is always asserted that it will "because humans are such bad drivers compared to computers," but there's no actual, real-world data to back up that claim. Oh yes, some of these vehicles have been tested with millions of road miles, but that is far from the scale of billions or trillions of road miles on every kind of road under all conditions where people travel currently.
- aetherspawn 8y ago
  They’re still working out the kinks in the elevator in my old office; it spent 6 months of the year out of order every day being repaired, and numerous people got trapped in it. Eventually, people just stopped using it, even when it was “fixed”.. because it never really was. It behaved like a chronic dud. A bad self driving car would probably develop the same reputation.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  Of course, it's not the elevator buttons that kill, it's the entrance.
shabble 8y ago
"Thank you for choosing Liftatron 4000. These multi-occupant vertical travel devices are almost fully autonomous, and typically require no manual control. Simply state your floor, and enjoy your journey. Trips passing floors 3, 7, or any floor in which any resident has recently taken a shower, may revert this Fully Autonomous Lifting Device to human operated mode immediately following a n assertive audio tone. Failure to correctly operate the pop-up controls during this unlikely occurrence may result in death or serious injury to you and any other passengers. Please take the time to familiarise yourself with all operating controls that will rarely if ever be required."
- Semirhage 8y ago
  ...and then we have the issues of “non-standard” accents. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
stephengillie 8y ago
What would the elevator operator do if the elevator got stuck between floors, or kept going past the selected floor? Was there a hand brake for the elevator that only they could use?
- ams6110 8y ago
  They probably couldn't do any more than they could do when the manually operated elevator got stuck between floors. I think the real reason that elevator operators stayed on for a period of time is the same reason that some older people sometimes reject new technology, such as smartphones or in-home digital assistants, even when it ostensibly makes a lot of things easier. The same thing probably happened with push-button elevators. People didn't want to have to think about pushing buttons when they were used to just stepping into the elevator and telling the operator what floor they needed, or more likely the operator already knew.
danso 8y ago
Point taken, but it doesn't mean that the scope and requirements of elevator travel are directly comparable to road travel. Car driving has not only more axes of allowed movement, but several magnitudes more variables. The skill floor for operating an elevator has more or less been the same, and easy enough for someone without any training. But driving a car today still requires weeks of education, as it did decades ago.
jancsika 8y ago
> I recall when push button elevators were installed. The designs for some of the first push button elevator circuitry was really cool tech. It was a complicated problem because elevators could appear and disappear in a given building at will. Some would appear and operate within a building for only a few minutes. Otherwise could leave seconds after they arrived without signaling their departure. The circuitry had to account for this unreliability within the "network" of all possible elevators within a given city block. The circuity in each elevator car also had to handle collision avoidance as new elevators appeared within the same shaft as other elevator cars that were already moving in that shaft. It's fascinating to look at the designs: www.archive.org/apples-and-oranges.html Self-driving cars seem like a cake walk by comparison.
- rileyphone 8y ago
  Elevators gaining sentience is a little to Hitchiker's Guide to me. Would be frightening.

Semirhage 8y ago

When push-button elevators were installed, they worked. Can you imagine if the pitch had been, “sometimes this elevator will kill the odd person, thanks for helping us work out the bugs.” As a bonus, the actual working elevator might not emerge until decades after installation began, and the early models only worked on alternate Wednesday’s.

regulation_d 8y ago
This might be a valid point if the current system of driving wasn’t already killing millions of people per year.
- sverige 8y ago
  "Millions" is an overstatement. Annual deaths worldwide are around 1.25 million. And deaths in the U.S. have declined significantly from their peak in the '70s. All of that begs the question of whether autonomous cars will save lives. It is always asserted that it will "because humans are such bad drivers compared to computers," but there's no actual, real-world data to back up that claim. Oh yes, some of these vehicles have been tested with millions of road miles, but that is far from the scale of billions or trillions of road miles on every kind of road under all conditions where people travel currently.
aetherspawn 8y ago
They’re still working out the kinks in the elevator in my old office; it spent 6 months of the year out of order every day being repaired, and numerous people got trapped in it. Eventually, people just stopped using it, even when it was “fixed”.. because it never really was. It behaved like a chronic dud. A bad self driving car would probably develop the same reputation.
jonhendry18 8y ago
Of course, it's not the elevator buttons that kill, it's the entrance.

shabble 8y ago

"Thank you for choosing Liftatron 4000. These multi-occupant vertical travel devices are almost fully autonomous, and typically require no manual control. Simply state your floor, and enjoy your journey. Trips passing floors 3, 7, or any floor in which any resident has recently taken a shower, may revert this Fully Autonomous Lifting Device to human operated mode immediately following a n assertive audio tone. Failure to correctly operate the pop-up controls during this unlikely occurrence may result in death or serious injury to you and any other passengers. Please take the time to familiarise yourself with all operating controls that will rarely if ever be required."

Semirhage 8y ago
...and then we have the issues of “non-standard” accents. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

stephengillie 8y ago

What would the elevator operator do if the elevator got stuck between floors, or kept going past the selected floor? Was there a hand brake for the elevator that only they could use?

ams6110 8y ago
They probably couldn't do any more than they could do when the manually operated elevator got stuck between floors. I think the real reason that elevator operators stayed on for a period of time is the same reason that some older people sometimes reject new technology, such as smartphones or in-home digital assistants, even when it ostensibly makes a lot of things easier. The same thing probably happened with push-button elevators. People didn't want to have to think about pushing buttons when they were used to just stepping into the elevator and telling the operator what floor they needed, or more likely the operator already knew.

danso 8y ago

Point taken, but it doesn't mean that the scope and requirements of elevator travel are directly comparable to road travel. Car driving has not only more axes of allowed movement, but several magnitudes more variables. The skill floor for operating an elevator has more or less been the same, and easy enough for someone without any training. But driving a car today still requires weeks of education, as it did decades ago.

jancsika 8y ago

> I recall when push button elevators were installed. The designs for some of the first push button elevator circuitry was really cool tech. It was a complicated problem because elevators could appear and disappear in a given building at will. Some would appear and operate within a building for only a few minutes. Otherwise could leave seconds after they arrived without signaling their departure. The circuitry had to account for this unreliability within the "network" of all possible elevators within a given city block. The circuity in each elevator car also had to handle collision avoidance as new elevators appeared within the same shaft as other elevator cars that were already moving in that shaft. It's fascinating to look at the designs: www.archive.org/apples-and-oranges.html Self-driving cars seem like a cake walk by comparison.

rileyphone 8y ago
Elevators gaining sentience is a little to Hitchiker's Guide to me. Would be frightening.