Questions 23-33 refer to the following information.
Driverless Car, Meet Operator-less Elevator
Google has been busily testing its “driverless cars” for the last three years, promising a release date within a matter of years. While Americans seem interested, they do not seem fully convinced regarding the technology just yet. What if the car crashes? What if it spins out of control? Won’t a human driver be able to adapt to conditions better than a computer will?
Google is taking these questions very seriously. Luckily, 23 they’re able to learn from history. “How is it possible,” the Google executives wonder, “to make people comfortable with automated, interactive technology— especially when it comes to their safety?” This question is at least 115 years old. It was also posed when the automated elevator was invented in 24 1900, at the turn of the last century.
The first safety-elevator, 25 the best elevator anyone had seen to that point, was installed at 488 Broadway in New York City in 1857. Before that time, elevators were operated by elevator operators. These were men, and later women, who controlled all elevator 26 functions: these operators opened and closed the doors and guided the elevator to level stops by hand.
By 1900, several completely automated elevators were installed in various commercial buildings in New York City. 27 Although the automated elevator seemed like a guaranteed success, the public loathed and feared the new technology. People feared that, in the absence of an operator, the elevator would plummet to the floor and kill everyone inside. Many refused to ride such elevators, and the buildings that had installed them quickly returned to the practice of manual elevator operation.
28 Soon, the government would have to intervene. That year, a strike of fifteen thousand workers in commercial trades, including elevator operators, doormen, porters, firemen, and maintenance workers, brought the main business districts of New York to a halt, leaving 1.5 million people unable to get to work. No one was manning the elevators, and 29 upwards to 8 million dollars in federal taxes were lost per day. As a result, and in order to remove such power from any future strikes, the elevator industry dedicated itself to reintroducing the American public to the automated elevator. Demonstrating how safe and enjoyable the experience could be, the industry ran ads for the next few years featuring children pushing buttons in elevators and asking to ride again. 30 People also began to see more and more elevators without operators.
Google is paying close attention to the elevator 31 industries experience, and it is demonstrating that attention in a number of creative ways. 32 For example, Google believes, as the elevator industry did many years earlier, that publicizing the production and testing process will create a sense of normalcy around the product before it is even introduced. Only time will tell how well these techniques will work, 33 and whether the nervous public will be willing to accept them.
