Some features of our society are so ubiquitous that we never pause to consider their impacts on our life, for better or for worse.
Take traffic lights, for example. Very few of us alive today can remember a time when the movement of people through an urban area was governed by individual discretion or by the assistance of actual human beings. Now, traffic lights, are the arbiters of the flow of human movement in just about any place where a car can go, and pedestrians are also now increasingly governed by these mindless machines.
“Traffic lights are a very crude, if you like, metaphor for being regulated and audited, told what to do rather than being able to take control of your own destiny. I think what we hate doing is being forced to do things that make no sense. The ultimate cry against bureaucracy is that it doesn’t make sense or its wasting time, if your blindly told to obey something or do something and you cant’ see the reason for it.” -Professor Susan Greenfield
A cool invention to be sure, but are traffic lights really the best way to govern traffic in our towns and cities? Could it be that traffic lights are actually causing more problems than they solve, without us having even considered their inefficiency? What would happen if we abandoned traffic lights, removed them, then left movement through busy intersections up to the cooperation and mutual respect of drivers?
Surely the world would fall into chaos, right? A total breakdown of civilization as we know it… complete anarchy maybe? Full story...
Related posts:
Take traffic lights, for example. Very few of us alive today can remember a time when the movement of people through an urban area was governed by individual discretion or by the assistance of actual human beings. Now, traffic lights, are the arbiters of the flow of human movement in just about any place where a car can go, and pedestrians are also now increasingly governed by these mindless machines.
“Traffic lights are a very crude, if you like, metaphor for being regulated and audited, told what to do rather than being able to take control of your own destiny. I think what we hate doing is being forced to do things that make no sense. The ultimate cry against bureaucracy is that it doesn’t make sense or its wasting time, if your blindly told to obey something or do something and you cant’ see the reason for it.” -Professor Susan Greenfield
A cool invention to be sure, but are traffic lights really the best way to govern traffic in our towns and cities? Could it be that traffic lights are actually causing more problems than they solve, without us having even considered their inefficiency? What would happen if we abandoned traffic lights, removed them, then left movement through busy intersections up to the cooperation and mutual respect of drivers?
Surely the world would fall into chaos, right? A total breakdown of civilization as we know it… complete anarchy maybe? Full story...
Related posts:
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- Pyongyang, traffic cops and a red mini...
- Europe doing away with traffic lights and road signs, and accidents diminish...
- German town eliminates traffic signs and all hell breaks loose!!
- English town turns off traffic lights and gets surprising results...
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