BY: JESSICA BEUKER
Waiting—for the bus, for the subway, in a line-up—often feels irritatingly long. Most people whip out their smart phones or tablets to pass the time, aimlessly scrolling through Facebook and double-clicking every picture on their Instagram feed, but a French start-up has implemented a new, creative way to make the time fly by.
Short Edition, a series of eight machines spread throughout Grenoble, France, are spitting out original short fiction stories and poetry at the push of a button.
The team behind the idea sees the stories as a way to fill time while waiting at bus stations and subway stations, but it’s also a creative approach to encourage people to put down their phones for a while. The project could also be used as an engine for improving literacy and imagination, mentions Good Magazine.
The idea is to fill time while waiting at bus stations and subway stations.
The dispensers are free and available at any time. The machine has three buttons, which serve as options for either a one, three or five minute story. Once the user selects which length they would like, the machine prints a random short story or poem. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
The dispensers are free and available at any time.
What’s even cooler is that the stories, about 600 of them so far, are written and selected by the Short Edition online community, which has 141,000 subscribers and 1,100 authors, according to co-creator Quentin Pleplé in an interview with Good Magazine.
Genres available include adventure, thriller, drama and romance. The stories are simple enough to be read by a 10-year-old and the content is suitable for all ages.
The stories are written and selected by the Short Edition online community.
The idea was given the green light by Grenoble’s mayor, Eric Piolle, a green party politician. It’s not the first great idea he’s helped make a reality either. At the end of last year, Grenoble became the first European city to go ad-free, after Piolle passed a ban, which would eliminate all outdoor advertisements and replace them with trees. According to RT, he’s also cut the speed limit in the city and created more pedestrian spaces.
Currently, the machines are only in Grenoble, but creators hope to expand anywhere they can, and are looking into the U.S. and Italy right now.
Image sourcing: updateordie.com, good.is
