I was completely dumbfounded recently when I was taking an elevator in Shanghai. Perhaps some of you might have also experienced this.
I thought there was an international standard to elevators. Press up or down arrow. Wait for ding. Enter elevator. Press desire floor. Stare at something not embarrassing. Wait for ding. Leave elevator.
But I encountered a numeric keypad at the elevator. At first I thought it was for security. Then I notice the very elaborate plaque in what looked like Klingon symbols. But after about a minute of staring at the symbols with a tilted head it became recognizable as simplified characters.
So reading the instructions twice to make sure I understood the “new” method, I enter destination floor on keypad. Wait for ding. Enter elevator. Ponder where those nice glow buttons with numbers are. Resist pressing chrome wall with no buttons. Get totally confuse by the ding, since you haven’t pressed a glow button yet. Leave the elevator totally unsatisfied and wondering if you’re on the right floor.
Seriously this really puts a crimp on my routine. Can you imagine being in a rush and jumping into a random elevator right behind another person, only to realize that the controls to the destination floor is outside the elevator…
In this particular case, newer is not better, IMHO.
It’s called “destination elevators”. It increases the efficiency of the elevator.
Technically, it makes a lot of sense: the elevator now has twice as much information (instead of “somebody is there and want to go up”, which in China normally is "somebody is there and wanne go somewhere (people pressing both up and down buttons), the elevator knows now “somebody there, and he wants to go to xx floor”). This additional information is used to optimize the route of the elevator.
Just imaging like calling a taxi per phone: “I need a taxi to the airport”. Same thing.
The building on the south-east corner of Fuxing and Minsheng East Road in Taipei is the same. The security guards in the lobby direct you to the elevator, you get in, and it magically takes you to the floor you’ve got at appointment at.
But what happens when you change your mind once you get into the taxi. Do you have to get out of the taxi and call the dispatch again to tell them you just changed your mind, forced to wait for the next taxi?
But there is human interaction. So it is almost like the quaint older elevators with an operator inside. There is a perception of “human” control.
With the keypad on the outside of the elevator, the user feels they are no longer in control once they step into the elevator.
There is another elevator system like this in Hsindian just across the Jingmei bridge in a place called Casamia. I was confused as hell the first couple of times I used it, but then began to realise why someone seemed to have gone out of there way to make the thing fancy looking and finally understood it and liked it after that. Of course if the thing had chinese buttons I would have thought it sucked though, the one in Hsindian has a numeric key pad and doesn’t require a second language in order to operate it.
[quote]If you want control, use the stairs I say.
Is this such a big deal?[/quote]
Stairs is the leading cause of death in the world. More people die from stairs than cigarettes and motocycle accidents combined. They really should be banned. Escalators are barely tolerable.
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