The public restroom, never a pleasant place, has in recent years become\u00a0a dystopia. It presents us with a preview, in\u00a0microcosm, of our automated future. Motion detectors and other sensors register\u00a0our presence, read our intentions, and, on our behalf, turn on the lights, flush the toilets, open the taps, squirt out the liquid soap, and dispense\u00a0towelettes for drying. There is a weird tension between the primitiveness of the bodily functions being executed in the contemporary restroom\u00a0and the sophistication of the technology facilitating the execution. The pee\u00a0and the poop, if I may be indelicate, seem out of place in the very place designed to accommodate them. Nowhere\u00a0so\u00a0much as in a public restroom does one wish one were a robot.<\/p>\n
Yet, as\u00a0Ian Bogost reminds us, in an illuminating Atlantic piece<\/a>, the inconvenient truth about the automated\u00a0public restroom\u00a0is that nothing works worth a crap. Whatever it is that has been automated here bears no resemblance to even the most rudimentary of human skills. The automated toilet flushes prematurely, often\u00a0repeatedly, while\u00a0we are still seated\u00a0upon it, and then, once we’ve reassumed\u00a0an erect posture and want nothing more than to exit the stall, it refuses to flush at all.\u00a0The automated soap dispenser either doesn’t work or spits soap on our trousers. The automated faucet either doesn’t work or sprays out such a gusher that the water bounces off the sink and soaks our\u00a0shirt. The automated towel dispenser hands\u00a0us a strip of ugly brown\u00a0paper that would be too small to dry the hands of a hamster.<\/p>\n We reassure\u00a0ourselves, as we leave the restroom damp and shamefaced, that\u00a0the entire experience, however miserable in raw human terms, has been carefully engineered to maximize efficiency and save precious resources. Our discomfort is simply the price we have to pay for advanced technology that is “green” and “smart.” But, as Bogost also reminds us, this is an illusion<\/a>. Thanks to what’s called “phantom flushing,” sensor-flush toilets end up using nearly 50 percent more water than do manual-flush toilets, according to one real-world study. The reality is probably\u00a0equally perverse with sensor-controlled faucets, soap dispensers, and paper-towel dispensers, which demand that the user\u00a0activate them repeatedly in order to get the required amount in the required place.<\/p>\n Bogost argues that the automated restroom has been designed not to save resources but rather to reduce labor costs: “When a toilet flushes incessantly, or when a faucet shuts off on its own, or when a towel dispenser discharges only six inches of paper when a hand waves under it, it reduces the need for human workers to oversee, clean, and supply the restroom.” I would bet that even here the desired benefit is illusory. Automated restrooms, with their wasteful ways and wayward sprays, seem to me to be at least as filthy as manually operated restrooms, requiring at least as much janitorial labor. And the greater complexity of the fixtures means more breakdowns and more repairs, increasing maintenance labor. In short, the automated restroom fails on pretty much every measure. Yet we accept it\u00a0as good and necessary because it fits the prevailing paradigm of progress, in which technological advances are viewed as social advances.<\/p>\n