Cool

“In the old system—board elevator, press button—you have an illusion of control; elevator manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they’re driving the conveyance. In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.”

[From What elevators can teach us about superstition | Scientific Blogging]

Only one thing, bunky - that's not the old system you've got there, it's the new. In the old system what you did was board and tell an elevator operator what floor you wanted to go to and she (where i worked they were all nice Irish girls from Brooklyn with red hair and freckles and smart company uniforms with white gloves) or he (it was pretty much an equal-opportunity occupation, as I recall) would take you there, sometimes having to jiggle the car up or down a little to get even with the floor, and pull the door open so you could get out, and then call out "going up" or "going down" so people waiting for a car could get on.

Then they invented those push-button ones and it was all, well, down from there. But where I worked they kept the operators around for a little while to do the button-pushing, maybe so people wouldn't feel so alone and maybe just because they were nice Irish girls from Brooklyn. But then they went away, too, and ever since an elevator has been just a machine.