Mechanical placebos
Posted at 9:38pm on Thursday, December 9th, 2004I’ve just got the new Douglas Coupland novel (Eleanor Rigby - you should buy it - it’s really rather good, though not as good as Hey Nostradamus!) and was sparked to start thinking about a throwaway comment from the main character that the “close door” buttons in lifts don’t actually do anything, but are in fact mechanical placebos. Just starting out as I was to see if there were any more such things I discover that today’s things is already musing about the same subject and refers to this MeFi thread (among others). How bizarre. Clearly we’re all reading the same book at the moment.
