Missing Technology…

San Francisco is by many aspect the mecca of internet technology. This means that discussion about finding the pub involves smartphones, GPS, and many other technologies that where once the exclusivity of the military. Curiously I’m not sure that it really helps getting you beers sooner. Once in the pub, e-mails and other messages are sent to get more people to pub, but in the end, our group just bumped into another and conversation started the old fashioned way.

Despite all this technology, the striking thing for is all the nice technology that has not reached this region of the world.

Shower controls

There must be some curse on the anglo-saxon community that prevents the use of sensible controls in showers. You basically want to control two variables: pressure and temperature. Here, you cannot, there is only one control, with controls both at the same time. At the lowest setting you get weak and cold, then you get strong and cold, and finally strong and warm. This means that the shower has to go through the mode you do not like: cold and strong.

Sensible windows

I’m not talking about operating system, but the things in the walls to get the light in. The windows in my appartement are of the guillotine type. This means that it slides open vertically. The problem with this system is that to open the window, you need to open three latches (one on each side, and one in the middle), then pull the window up, which requires quite some strength as there is no convenient grip.

Convenient Receipts

In Switzerland, in many places the receipts contain the value in euros for the convenience of tourists. In the US you are supposed to tip, but this means you have to do calculations in your head, which is not exactly what I want to do in a pub. It would be relatively simple to reprogram cash register to pre-calculate some reasonable tip values. Counting on me to err on the side of caution in favor of the pub does not seem a very honest business model.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.