
Why Nothing Works Anymore - dthal
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-singularity-in-the-toilet-stall/517551/?single_page=true
======
ianferrel
While automatic bathroom fixtures are a bit touchy, I think the author hasn't
really considered how much they improve the worst case.

I used to _regularly_ walk into public bathrooms in which someone had used the
toilet and simply not flushed it. That doesn't happen much any more. I'm
willing to deal with a lot of phantom flushes to _not_ deal with someone
else's literal shit.

I used to _regularly_ find public bathrooms where someone (I'm assuming a
vandal, although it could just be a distracted or careless person) has left
the water running. A fully open faucet can erase the gains of more judicious
human usage pretty quickly.

The author waxes nostalgic about those cloth towel roll dispensers. His
experience does not match mine. I generally see those things in old gas
stations where the cleanliness of the towel is _deeply_ suspect.

~~~
Bartweiss
Automatic faucets are one of my favorite examples of _positive_ added
technology. They're flaky and annoying to activate, but compared to the
possibility of leaving a faucet running full-blast for (potentially) hours?
That's a huge improvement.

Automatic soap dispensers are much less persuasive to me, though. There was no
"just open" state to get rid of, so the flakiness is offering much less
benefit. You have to touch pump-dispensers, sure, but that's also done
_before_ you wash your hands.

~~~
lucaspiller
What's wrong with the faucets that instead of turning, you push down and they
run for a few seconds before stopping?

My pet hate of public toilets now are the airblade style hand dryers. My hands
are seemingly too big, so to dry the top (closest to my wrist) I need to bend
my fingers to avoid touching the puddle of water and dirt in the bottom.

~~~
gr3yh47
>What's wrong with the faucets that instead of turning, you push down and they
run for a few seconds before stopping?

dirty hands touch them a lot and you have to touch them multiple times during
handwashing, re-dirtying your hands

if the stream actually lasted a reasonable amount of time it would be less of
an issue but i dont think i've seen that ever

~~~
conductr
Without towels you're going to touch the door handle on the way out anyways.
People that don't wash their hands touched the door handle. My point is to
stop pretending you can keep your hands clean for any significant duration

~~~
tdb7893
I generally use my feet to open doors actually. It's not at all hard and with
touchless faucets and toilets I pretty much only touch paper towels.

~~~
UIZealot
With doors you can push to exit, sure. More troublesome are those you have to
pull. I basically have to wait impatiently by the door for the next guy to
come in so I can get out without touching the door with my hand.

~~~
nils-m-holm
Use a paper towel or the sleeve of your jacket or shirt.

------
kristianc
In most of these cases technology seems to have replaced something that was
fairly precarious and imperfect before.

Autocorrect incorrectly assuming the word you want to use replaced that
message taking three days to arrive at its destination. Content wrapped in DRM
replaced that content not being available at all. Unwieldy knobs and dials in
hotel room showers replaced... unwieldy knobs and dials in hotel room showers.
Amazon's tyranny of choice replaced being price gouged because the thing you
wanted was only stocked by one retailer in town.

This folksy techno-luddism is quick to point out the foibles of what we have
now, but almost never points out how shit things used to be.

At least it doesn't end in the same place as most of these pieces, with a
vacuuous assertion that we all need to start living 'in the moment.'

~~~
waqf
> _Autocorrect incorrectly assuming the word you want to use replaced that
> message taking three days to arrive at its destination._

Seems like you don't remember email on your PC.

> _Content wrapped in DRM replaced that content not being available at all._

Seems like you don't remember Napster either. Where were you in the decade
1995–2005?

~~~
stinos
_> Autocorrect incorrectly assuming the word you want to use replaced that
message taking three days to arrive at its destination.

Seems like you don't remember email on your PC._

Or simply sms without autocorrect. OP has a point, but this indeed is a bad
example. As far as I can see autocorrect for messaging being wrong didn't
replace anything, it's something new which just doesn't always work properly.
Which is exactly the point of the article.

~~~
thinkmassive
I could type faster using T9 on a 10-key flip phone than I can on an iPhone
today. On Android I used SwiftKey for many years and would bet I'm fastest on
that, but I decided to try an iPhone 6S and it seems like a huge step back
regarding input. I still can't believe they don't have a swype-like input
method.

~~~
ansgri
iOS supports third-party keyboards since, like, 8th edition. Exactly what made
iPhone acceptable to me.

Not that I'm too happy with it: for some reason my SwiftKey's gesture-
recognizing algorithm seems to be getting worse over time, while next-word
prediction becomes better.

~~~
thinkmassive
Oh wow, that's embarrassing for me, but thank you!

------
purplethinking
This is one reason I have almost no interest in IoT / home automation. It just
replaces extremely mild annoyances (turning on the lights) with something
complicated and fragile.

~~~
Klathmon
But there are ways to build/architect home automation so that it's an
"addition" and at worst will go back to "dumb switch".

Most of the light switches in my house are wired up through Z-Wave. Those
z-wave boxes are in the electrical box in-between the normal, everyday,
traditional light switch and the power.

100% of the time, if i flip the switch a direction, it changes the state of
the light. It never fails. Power just came back on? still works. Z-Wave
controller down? Still works. Internet out? still works.

Then, I can "add on" automation using that zwave network to do things like
turn lights on/off from my phone.

If anything were to cause issues, have bugs, have problems, etc... I can
unplug the controller and it goes back to fully functioning light switches.

~~~
CaptSpify
I think your hitting the aspect most IoT designers never think about: systems
should fail like an escalator, not an elevator. You should still be able to
get the basic usage out of the product if everything else fails.

While I'm working on my own system similar to yours, and I'm designing around
the same concept, most IoT manufacturers aren't. I get why people's default
reaction to IoT stuff is to run away, because they are mostly _very_ poorly
designed.

~~~
Klathmon
I love that expression! "Fail like an escalator" describes it perfectly!

The issue I see is that there are many things that are designed like that, but
they often require professional installation or are significantly more
expensive, which leads to many just getting the cheaper option which works in
the best case scenario.

------
lsc
This reminds me of the "everything is awesome and nobody is happy" essay.

We are most of the way to the wonderful goal of being able to use the bathroom
without touching anything anyone else has touched, and all this person can do
is complain that it isn't quite perfect.

Do you remember the 80s solution for public faucets? They used springs to turn
off the water after five seconds. You had to press a button really hard, then
wash really fast. The electric things aren't perfect, but they are a big
improvement.

The complaints about auto correct are especially funny. I had a palm 5 and a
wonderful folding keyboard and a cdpd modem. But only one serial port on the
palm, so it was connectivity or keyboard, not both. Graffiti was terrible
compared to any modern input system. The smartphone in my pocket is amazing.
Swype is what it took to make me abandon thumb boards, and Swype is amazing.

------
douche
I'm a software engineer, and I work with technology all day long, and am
mostly thankful for it - it pays the bills, after all. But I dearly love going
back home to Hicksville a couple weekends a month. Most of the stuff my
parents have and use on a daily basis is older than I am, and it just works,
because it is all mechanical and built to a much higher standard than you can
get without spending an exorbitant amount of money now, if indeed you can get
that kind of quality at all. It's not like it was high-end stuff at the time
they bought it, either - I'm talking about a 1930s John Deere farm tractor, a
couple 1980s Ford pickups, kitchen appliances from the 1970s, hand tools that
could collect Social Security. Stuff that just works, and if it breaks, any
idiot with some basic tools can fix.

Even mundane objects that nobody (I hope) is ever going to try to put a WiFi
card in are not-so-subtly more terrible than they used to be. My favorite
example is the five-gallon gasoline can[1].

[1] [http://www.gad.net/Blog/2012/11/22/one-mans-quest-for-gas-
ca...](http://www.gad.net/Blog/2012/11/22/one-mans-quest-for-gas-cans-that-
dont-suck/)

~~~
liveoneggs
wow thanks for linking to that article. My current gas can is ridiculously
difficult to use.

~~~
zip1234
That's partly because of safety regulations making it have anti-spill
features.

------
meesterdude
> devices like automatic-flush toilets acclimate their users to apparatuses
> that don’t serve users well in order that they might serve other actors,
> among them corporations and the sphere of technology itself

This nails it. It's not that things couldn't be implemented in a way that
serves the users, it's that they're optimized to serve the interests of other
parties first.

------
valine
> The iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard works, in part, by trying to predict what
> the user is going to type next. It does this invisibly, by increasing and
> decreasing the tappable area of certain keys based on the previous keys
> pressed.

I've had an iPhone since iOS 2 and I never realized the key's touch area could
change size. If you ask me the iPhone keyboard works perfectly.

~~~
tbihl
Absolutely agreed. I could type better on an iPod touch with its tiny 2010
screen than I can on my 6 inch Android screen (despite my large hands.)

Outside of that, the author nailed it. Especially the phone system, though he
could have taken it further in saying that the humans after the recordings is
also taught to not serve the user, but rather be an obstruction with just
enough "give" to prevent legal action. The exceptions to the seem rare, but I
definitely cling to them.

------
dfmooreqqq
I tend to think that this is a product of the "newness" of technologies. Old
technologies - such as paper, pens, flush toilets, etc. - lasted in part
because they were robust and not-precarious. We don't remember the
technologies that fell by the wayside along the way - they simply didn't last.

------
ThePhysicist
I find it extremely funny that loading the website shows me a message asking
me to turn off my ad blocker. Seems that some things don't work anymore
because we break them intentionally...

BTW I'd be fine looking at some ads, turning off my blocker is not an option
though as the third party ads always track your behavior and often store
personally identifiable data without user consent.

~~~
recursive
The argument can easily be made that your ad blocker is the component that's
intentionally breaking things.

~~~
michaelmrose
For values of breaking that include

\- Keeping your pc free of malware. \- Keeping people from trying to
aggressively promote lies, half truths, and nonsense in your own home. \-
Making the web work both better and faster.

------
PaulHoule
It reminds me of the bathrooms at the conference center at the Union Square
Hilton where a sensor will ejaculate some white creamy foam soap on your cuffs
if you aren't careful.

~~~
Bartweiss
I once saw a soap dispenser which had gotten stuck in a loop.

If no one caught the soap, it fell past the sensor, triggering another soap
release, and so on.

I'm sure it was a special case, some obscure failure of the repeat-dispense
lockout or something. But I couldn't help marveling at how much effort had
gone into making such a singularly crap product; it was behaving worse than
would even be _possible_ for a lower tech device.

~~~
agency
Reminds me of this marvel of modern engineering:
[http://imgur.com/Na9jGYR](http://imgur.com/Na9jGYR)

------
dmitrygr
You can see this in websites too. Each year they get bigger and slower while
offering nothing (of value) new to the user.

[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

------
socrates1998
I think it's interesting how PC technology has changed in the past 30 years. I
remember when PC's first were everywhere in the late 80's. They generally
worked, but when they went down (like a virus), they were down for a long time
and sometimes never came back.

This is all subjective, but I feel like the end of the 90's and early 2000's
was the low point for PC's and computers in general.

Viruses were everywhere it seemed. Things would break all the time. Shit was
never compatible. You had to have detailed knowledge of how software worked in
order to fix it.

I remember the day I was trying to fix my PC when I finally looked some of the
more under the hood files and programs, and was blow away at the complexity.
It was very humbling.

Then, somewhere in the late 2000's, something changed and I feel like
computers have been working better.

I don't have to fix my computer nearly as much. It just sort of works.

Sure, there are issues, but the frequency and intensity are much less (knock
on wood).

------
vorpalhex
This reads like a general lament about the world at large declining.

~~~
_rpd
The declensionist narrative is really in fashion right now.

~~~
zokier
People have been pining for the past golden days since antiquity. I'm not
really sure if it truly can be said to be "in fashion right now"

------
bckid
Ok this seems like a good time to get something that's been bothering me off
my chest. Can we please start using pressure sensors on toilet seats instead?
It kind of feels like it always should have been that way.

~~~
morinted
Lots of people stand when they wipe: [http://deadspin.com/5424415/sitters-vs-
standers--the-great-w...](http://deadspin.com/5424415/sitters-vs-standers--
the-great-wipe-hope)

~~~
ashark
Finding out about this a few months ago was enlightening. Entire classes of
messes I've seen in public restrooms that were previously inexplicable short
of deliberate action became comprehensible through a combination of stand-to-
wipers plus carelessness.

------
bobbytherobot
> Digital distribution has also made media access more precarious. Try
> explaining to a toddler that the episodes of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” that
> were freely available to watch yesterday via subscription are suddenly
> available only via on-demand purchase.

It was a pain trying to explain to a toddler why they couldn't watch Sesames
Street right now because it wasn't currently airing.

Generally, explaining anything to a toddler is a pain.

------
ouid
I think autocorrect provably does not provide any value. When you make a typo,
then the autocorrect mechanism is making an inference on your input that the
receiver of that message would be able to make better, since they have way
more context, and humans are still much better at this kind of problem than
computers.

------
kirykl
I think we're in the dark ages of user interface currently. It feels like
we've mastered skeuomorphism and moving away is fine, but we're in the infancy
of whatever's next.

