#770: Totalift

Traveling in a tall building’s lift the other day I scrutinised the control buttons and was surprised to find that the most worn ones were those for some of the uppermost floors.

If most people are going there, surely it makes energetic sense for the people seeing the most traffic to be located on the lowermost floors?

Today’s invention is a lift control pad which has only the names of companies or departments on it (ie no floor numbers). People press for their destination department and the pad counts the number of journeys to each.

It then reallocates floorspace in the building on a yearly basis -according to the frequency with which departments/companies have been visited. The most visited get positions nearer ground level (and a rental charge which better reflects their use of the building’s resources).

This requires an annual reordering of the building’s occupants but probably by no more than one floor -until a state of equilibrium is reached. Initial movements might serve as a useful organisational shakeup, as well as a cost readjustment mechanism).

See this article for some fascinating insights into liftshaft lore.

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