Does natural selection work for technological innovations? Surely new gizmos that don't really add any value to anyone's lives fail to take off and quietly die. Like the Sinclair C5. You'd think so, anyway.
But it just occurred to me, as I was taking advantage of the Observer's sanitation facilities, that the hot air hand dryer is an egregious exception to the rule. They don't work. Everyone knows they don't work. They blow hot air onto your hands for ages, and then you have to wipe them on something else because they aren't dry yet.
But somehow, this failure of an invention has spread across the land and shows no sign of going away. (Thankfully, the Observer also has a supply of infinitely more effective paper towels.) I can think of no other device that is so widespread and so woefully ineffective as the automatic hot air hand dryer. And it annoys me that they tend to go off when you simply walk past them. Ban them now.
Update. It's official. Great minds get irritated alike.
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