Observations of People and Technology

I was stuck in traffic this morning as I rode in a cab.  My driver was getting agitated, honking the horn every time the light was green but there was no movement.  I've been living in New York for about 4 years now and this has always been a prevalent issue, was traffic.  The unpredictability of people's decisions while driving coupled with too many cars in a congested artery gives people road rage and deep sighs.

This took me back to a time when I was talking to a friend about traffic lights.  In the suburbs where I grew up sometimes you'd be waiting at an intersection for minutes at the middle of the night.  You'd be the only car, but it was just busy enough of a road that if a cop saw you run it, it'd be more trouble than it's worth.  They said that some lights have light sensors to detect the cars headlamps at night when the traffic was sparse.  We would try flickering the hi-beams on and off in attempt to agitate the sensor and give us the green light.  I've also heard in other places that there were pressure sensors on the road to influence when the traffic signals change.

Like any city or town, there is a type of infrastructure, and in this modern day technology is integrated but in a very arbitrary way.  And this would boil down more to politics and money.  Which is sadly controlling a lot of creative advancements.

Is traffic a problem that cannot be fixed?  I thought as my driver raced onto the oncoming lane and veered off the the side street on the left, probably saving us both a good couple minutes of ambient honking.

Honking gives your car a voice, but it really doesn't communicate well when it is impossible to move further.  All it says is I'm angry and I want to get out of this hell hole of carbon monoxide clouds.

Perhaps this is more broad of an observation, but if I can pick something out more specifically,  it's hard.  Do I complain about the length it takes the elevators to arrive on the first floor of the Tisch building?  Or how my ID still doesn't work on the stairwell so I have to use the elevator to get onto the floor?

I'm not sure...

Maybe the technology is there, but people are not taught the right way to use them.  The most advanced car on the market will still have the same issues as a '69 Camero when placed in the grids of NY during rush hour. 

Maybe I'm answering my own question I had earlier this week.  How can I create something new in Physical Computing?  Maybe the question I should be asking is, how can this appear new to another person so they give it new perspective?  Because to me, I see the same servos and wires I've surrounded myself with since young.  Lighting something up, making something move, are all actions created from sensors feeding bits of information and a mini computer saying yes or no a few thousand times to speak to them, well, depending on how complex it really is.  To put it broadly, I think people have a hard time integrating with technology.  Why isn't it all more, human?