[conspire] Panic buying

[Nick Moffitt]

On 24Mar2020 12:08am (-0700), Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Texx (texxgadget at gmail.com):
> > The problem with that is that they wont work, they will be smart enough to
> > sulk in the basement throughout the disaster.
> 
> 'Here I am with a brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to take
> them to floor eleven.  Call that job satisfaction?  I don't....  And
> then of course I’ve got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my
> left side.'

It's striking to note that when Star Trek originally aired, lift attendants were still widespread.  The country had only just started to get used to self-drive pushbutton lifts.  But the voice control trope of calling out "deck six!" didn't happen until TNG in the late 1980s, by which point attendants were a generational memory.

Hitchhiker's Guide sat somewhere between the two.