Saturday, March 03, 2007

Distrusting others


When you are about to cross the street, the first thing in your mind is perhaps to press the crossing button then you wait for the red ligth turning to green. But have you noticed that people will press the button although some people who are there first might have pressed it too?

I am not sure whether this happens to anyone else. It occurs to me gazillion times when i am about to cross the street at the traffic light, people always press the crossing button even though i pressed it already, and perhaps others who have been standing there. Sometimes i'd like to say: "Dont worry about it, i have pressed it already". But i dont have the balls to do it.

Surely, you are safe to assume that people before you already did it based on the common purpose that we have. You are not standing next to the traffic light to have a wee, are you? So you only need to press once anyway. This is not like when you are about to take lift. There are two buttons on lift which tells you where do you want the lift to go. Press UP if you want to go to 2nd or 3rd floor and press DOWN otherwise. While the traffic light has only one button (unless you are blind and it means you need to hold the vibrating button), it has no other functions except for crossing over.

What does it mean? Is it a sign of distrust? Or is it just telling us how technology has shaped urban behaviour? We are obedient enough to follow the street signs which are meant to protect our safety. Thank God for this. Ironically, our sensibility does not seem to be big as our concern with safety issue. Safety first they said, fuck other things! Old sage says that we should not trust any strangers. No objection with that. But how damage will you have if a complete stanger who has the same purpose with us do our favour at the traffic light?

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