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from the push,-pull,-swipe,-turn-and-Pong dept.
Late for work in Manhattan, you push the crosswalk button and curse silently at the slowness of the signal change. You finally get a green light, cross the street, arrive at the office, get in the elevator and hit the close door (>|<) button to speed things along. Getting out on your target floor, you find that hurrying has you a bit hot under the collar, so you reach for the thermostat to turn up the air conditioning.
Each of these seemingly disconnected everyday buttons you pressed may have something in common: it is quite possible that none of them did a thing to influence the world around you. Any perceived impact may simply have been imaginary, a placebo effect giving you the illusion of control.
In the early 2000s, New York City transportation officials finally admitted what many had suspected: the majority of crosswalk buttons in the city are completely disconnected from the traffic light system. Thousands of these initially worked to request a signal change but most no longer do anything, even if their signage suggests otherwise.
[...] Today, a combination of carefully orchestrated automation and higher traffic has made most of these buttons obsolete. Citywide, there are around 100 crosswalk buttons that still work in NYC but close to 1,000 more that do nothing at all. So why not take them down? Removing the remaining nonfunctional buttons would cost the city millions, a potential waste of already limited funds for civic infrastructure.
More examples are quoted in linked article, and some suggestions how tech can make our lives more pleasant while waiting - Pong anyone?.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday August 24 2016, @04:48AM
No, the fire and smoke alarms were probably working fine; the "future cat lady" alarm may have been malfunctioning, though.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @04:22PM
Same AC. She was already a cat lady. I say "was" because she is banned from owning any pets. That's right, she had so many that she let wander the neighborhood and mistreated and they had already taken them away on multiple occasions, they actually took her to court and banned her from owning any. I think it was the third time in 6 years or so, until they ultimately did it. The city even went to the trouble of calling the office and having the boss keep her late because she had so many cats the last time they took them, some were literally living in the walls and they had to exhume some that were illegally buried on the property. The only reason I know how bad it was is because they took photo and video evidence the entire time, which she showed everyone to try and get them to sign a petition to let her have the cats back. Suffice to say, many people, especially new ones, were generally sympathetic until they saw the video. It was so bad that if that is what love looks like, I seriously wonder how mentally ill you'd have to be not to see it. It was also a great illustration about how mental illness can affect part of your life, but not others in that it didn't seem to cause a lot of trouble beyond the hoarding of cats and generally obsessive behavior.