Open Sesame

Even though it is one of the staple technologies of Star Trek, the development of automatic, sliding doors has been detrimental to our society. Automatic doors might be a convenient way of getting around the incredibly small amount of effort required to open a door yourself, but the downside is they make people stupid and complacent. If you don’t believe me, find someplace with automatic sliding doors and turn them off for a few minutes. I guarantee you will not have to wait long before you see a completely normal and competent person walk right into them. Either that, or people will pile up outside the door wondering, “how ever will I get inside there,” when there are perfectly functioning, manual doors on either side. This is a hilarious sight, but presents a bleak view of our society’s future. It is good to develop machines to make our lives easier, but when we give up the power to open doors by ourselves, so too goes all hope for independence.

“We were going to march on Washington, but the automatic doors were broken so we just milled around outside until somebody fixed them for us.”

I blame Ali Baba and his, “open sesame,” trick.