Earlier on, I was setting a video taping at work and the Sky+ box I have there was tuned to Discovery Science. On air at that moment was a programme about a building. Not overly interesting really apart from the fact that the university they were at was Plymouth UK (I’d imagine there is a Plymouth in the US and that there’s a university there…).
And the lift in this building had a button marked R which is for Random. So people can press this button and the lift will pick a floor at random to take them to. Apparantly, this is to get people to explore the building more than they would do.
So I started to think, what other places and things would benefit from a Random Button?
- MP3 or CD Players: OK, has already been done. And they do benefit from a Random Button.
- TV Remote Controls: Have you ever flicked through the TV channels and found something quite interesting on that you wouldn’t have found otherwise? Think about it…
- Internet: Browse the Internet by pressing a random button and see what happens.
- Sat Nav: Have a Random Button on a sat nav device, press it and see where it takes you. Hopefully it won’t drive you off a bridge or onto a railway. I think they’re getting better now though.
- Food: There’s a line in ‘dinnerladies’ where the main character Bren says that she takes the labels off her tins of food at home so she doesn’t know what she’ll have until she opens it. Perhaps Internet shopping sites should have a ‘random basket’ button which will just fill up your shopping basket with random items up to a certain amount.
Actually, this is harder than I thought. Any ideas?
* Footnote: As it happens, there were some other intresting quirks of this building – one of which was that it can create music based on how people pass through the building. I did actually tape the programme which I might watch at some point, maybe post the relevant bit here so you can see what I’m babbling on about…
