Looking back

While at work I stepped on to the elevator.  I have ridden it many times.  I’m usually alone on the elevator, so I have a few seconds of uninterrupted thought.  Time to look around and notice things.  Something I noticed was different than it had been in years past, was the no smoking sign.  This was your standard international symbol for no smoking, but what I noticed was it was actually stamped into the metal of elevator panel.  It wasn’t something placed as an after thought, it was designed into the construction of the elevator.  So the manufacture of the elevator parts were so certain that no smoking in the elevator was going to be widely accepted it was a permanent part of the construction process.   

This on the face of it makes sense, I mean where these days is it legal, or unacceptable for people to smoke on an elevator.  Then I considered other things that have changed as rules and socially accepted behaviors have changed.  If you watch a movie from the 1940’s everyone is smoking, I mean everyone!  Many of the men are wearing hats, although I don’t think that is a link with the smoking.  All the woman are wearing dresses, and even some of them have hats.  I notice the cars, and trucks of the time period.  The technology, if you will.     

I then thought of how when watching old movies you see other technologies that just stand out in your mind as dumb, or at the very least you are grateful they have been replaced with something else.  LCD flat screen TVs and monitors have only been around for a few years, and even now movies that are less than 10 years old that show the old bulky CRT monitors stand out.  I then thought of that no smoking sign and how it was a permanent part of the elevator.  How long would it be before people would step onto an elevator, see the no smoking sign and think, “Wow people used to smoke in such great numbers, that they had to be reminded not to smoke on an elevator.”  It is now 2010 and even though I work in a technology leading company with engineers building the most cutting edge equipment, I still smell cigarette smoke when I am walking through the parking garage entering and leaving the building.  I still see cigarette butts on the ground. 

Now please don’t misunderstand.  I’m no great believer in Government control over our personal decisions.  If you want to smoke please feel free to do so.  I personally believe that for myself it would be incredibility stupid.  Certainly from a health stand point, but also from a financial stand point.  We are now in the 21st century.  The 1940’s were 70 years ago, and although many people that used to smoke do not (many of them are dead) I can’t go out in public without seeing someone smoke, or smelling the foul stench of either a lit cigarette, or the distasteful pungent odor of someone that has just had their hourly fix.    

Well my seven second ride in the elevator is over.  Time to get the coffee I came to the cafeteria to get.  Hmmm maybe I should take the stairs.