Taran,
Read your blog on doorbells and enjoyed it greatly. Thought I might just add my 2 cents.
My family and I live in an apartment in NYC. We have a buzzer and intercom setup to the street, several stories below us. We'd love to have a TV cam in the lobby so we can see who rings our buzzer at 3 in the morning, but the building (it's a coop) doesn't think it's worth the money - so we stay with the mid-20th century buzzer and intercom system. And of course we never know who it is that rings our buzzer at 3 am.
Completely serendipitously, we came up with a different solution in the hallway outside our door. We installed a bell by the door. Literally, we installed a faux-antique bell outside our door that is designed for people to ring when they want us to come to the door. We really like the way it looks, it's nice brass with some antique-y looking scrollwork and some kind of Latin inscription. We didn't expect people to use it, we just liked the way it looked. Because it's inside the building, the only people who ring it are our neighbors or delivery people who've already negotiated the buzzer system.
We hung it on the wall, next to the door, about 4 and 1/2 feet off the floor. When someone rings it, the bell is about 18 inches from their head. The bell is nice, heavy brass, and when it rings, it's REALLY LOUD - especially to the person who rings it standing right there next to it. Looking though the peephole in our door we've actually seen people ring the bell and jump away from the wall, they scare themselves with the noise. Inside our house, the sound is quite pleasant.
Usually, people only ring the bell once because it's so loud to them they can't imagine that we wouldn't be able to hear it. If we don't want to be bothered, they eventually go away. If we feel like company, they know we couldn't have missed that huge noise, so they wait just a moment longer than perhaps otherwise.
Maybe you could connect your doorbell so that it buzzes right in front of the person who's pressing the button and scares the bejeezus out of them, while having a nice chime or musical selection play in your apt.
Or knocking is really good.
Sincerely, Jim Lerman
Taran Rampersad wrote:
levnew wrote:
While I am in complete agreement with you, I did wonder if a conceptual parallel would be the advent of the automobile.
We embraced it, didn't necessarily understand (or care) how it worked and now find outselves in the grip of a society dependent on foreign oil as a result.
Do you think that the same educative principles would have applied here?
Well, personally I believe that people still have problems with doorbells: http://www.knowprose.com/node/1306
In an odd sort of way, I'm forcing my visitors into a 'technology blackout'. They've been naughty, and I have revoked their license... :-)
But you make some good points... and I have one question at the end of the quote below:
If so, then comparatively speaking, would our society be far better off if we understood the inner workings of the internal combustion engine or it is enough to understand the fact that it burns gas and gives off pollutants as a result which will have a devastating effect on our world down the road...and what we as a society need to think in terms of doing about it?
I guess where I am trying to go with this is this: while I thoroughly enjoy the history or how the computer evolved, the Internet developed and the world changed as a result and all the critical analyses thereof, it that necessary to make me a responsible user of computing resources? My time as a technology educator in the classroom is precious and minimal. Some days I feel that it is far better spent teaching them about responsible computing, ethics, dangers of chatting, the importance of information management and how acquiring technology literacy will be foundational to their future than about DARPA, the difference between analog and digital and the difference between a LAN and a WAN. It just seems to me we are still playing "catch up" and I think for now, it is a luxury we cannot afford.
I wonder if we're spending too much time giving people answers to questions they don't have, instead of having them find the right questions to ask?
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