Now why is it we can't have a twist it on, twist it off faucet?

A fairly amusing line from Jerry Seinfeld in his 'I'm Telling you for the last time' show, but for some reason, the people who needed to hear it never did. All over the country public water dispensing devices have some kind of automatic shutoff feature, mostly because it was noticed that some people are not responsible enough to turn off the water themselves. Instead of restricting their use of such faucets, it was decided that the rest of us had to suffer through spring loaded faucets which dispense water only for a set amount of time (usually to short).

Now though, instead of addressing the original problem of humans being irresponsible, clever designers went with the 'automatic' system. Put your hands in the sink, water comes out, remove your hands, water goes off right? Sometimes. I will admit, the newest of these types of sinks in my experience have been perfect, but for many years it was a guessing game to figure out where to put your hands (and as i mentioned in other posts, costs will likely prevent upgrades).

To me though, we as humans have leaned towards fixing our short comings with technology a little to much, especially now that it seems technology is going to be able to do just about anything we can dream up. A recent movie, WALL-E, describes the direction we are heading quite well and i have to be honest, its just a little scary. Faucets, doors and toilets are one thing, but how long is it before we get rid of our responsibility to pick up after ourselves, go to the store, or even be human?

Automation is great, makes our lives easier, frees up our time to pursue other interests and always us to relax. Eventually all we may have to do is breath, but even that is automated by our body already!