A closer look
Moving walkways in airports actually cause passengers to travel slower on average because human beings subconsciously reduce their normal walking speed when stepping onto them; instead of turning us into hyper-efficient travel cyborgs sprinting to our gates, these mechanical belts turn us into lazy zombies who just stand there blocking the left lane while staring blankly at our phones; the optimistic engineers who designed these systems falsely assumed humanity would combine the speed of the belt with the speed of a brisk walk, completely underestimating our profound evolutionary desire to do absolutely nothing whenever possible; it is the perfect metaphor for modern technological progress where we invent a highly complex machine designed to save us precious time, and we immediately use it as an excuse to shut down our brains and become stagnant lumps of flesh
