Future Dystopia In The Toilet
We play now the dirge for Seattle's well-intentioned experiment with automated public toilets.
Automated public toilets, for those of you who don't know, and I didn't know until about fifteen minutes ago, are an extrusion of future tech that's popular in Europe, and also appear in New York and Los Angeles. When you press the button on the outside of the automated toilet, the door opens. When you go inside, the door stays closed for up to twenty minutes. When you leave, the toilet washes its own seat and floors. Seattle's units are twelve feet in circumference and nine feet high, which makes their exterior dimensions bigger than the bathroom in my house.
But to quote the Architect, the perfection of this idea was matched only by its monumental failure. At least in the Pacific northwest. It turns out the clientele of the automated toilets left behind so much trash as to overwhelm the automatic washing mechanisms, which had to be shut down. This leaves me with a vision of someone standing outside one of these units, asking passerby to please push the button because they've got a cinder block in one hand and half an old bicycle in the other, or maybe they're dragging a double mattress. The automated toilets and their twenty minutes of privacy were swarmed immediately (if not sooner) by hookers and junkies, and while the article linked below makes no mention, I would not be too thrilled with the idea of what pack of urban jackals might be waiting outside the door when I come out.
The failure of the program is measured by the assessment of Veronyka Cordner, local homeless woman: "I'm not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there. But I won't even go inside that thing now. It's disgusting."
Over four years, Seattle spent five million on their five robot toilets, one toilet for every 120,000 residents. Compare that to the fact that building and maintaining a three bedroom, two bathroom house for four years costs about $350,000. Now you can bid on the toilets on Ebay, for $89,000 minimum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/17toilets.html?hp
Automated public toilets, for those of you who don't know, and I didn't know until about fifteen minutes ago, are an extrusion of future tech that's popular in Europe, and also appear in New York and Los Angeles. When you press the button on the outside of the automated toilet, the door opens. When you go inside, the door stays closed for up to twenty minutes. When you leave, the toilet washes its own seat and floors. Seattle's units are twelve feet in circumference and nine feet high, which makes their exterior dimensions bigger than the bathroom in my house.
But to quote the Architect, the perfection of this idea was matched only by its monumental failure. At least in the Pacific northwest. It turns out the clientele of the automated toilets left behind so much trash as to overwhelm the automatic washing mechanisms, which had to be shut down. This leaves me with a vision of someone standing outside one of these units, asking passerby to please push the button because they've got a cinder block in one hand and half an old bicycle in the other, or maybe they're dragging a double mattress. The automated toilets and their twenty minutes of privacy were swarmed immediately (if not sooner) by hookers and junkies, and while the article linked below makes no mention, I would not be too thrilled with the idea of what pack of urban jackals might be waiting outside the door when I come out.
The failure of the program is measured by the assessment of Veronyka Cordner, local homeless woman: "I'm not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there. But I won't even go inside that thing now. It's disgusting."
Over four years, Seattle spent five million on their five robot toilets, one toilet for every 120,000 residents. Compare that to the fact that building and maintaining a three bedroom, two bathroom house for four years costs about $350,000. Now you can bid on the toilets on Ebay, for $89,000 minimum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/17toilets.html?hp