Doors are wonderful inventions. I can’t imagine this planet without doors. If there were no such things as doors, life would be extremely different. Since that’s not true, I can only imagine what it’d be like.
We would have no privacy, or total privacy. Imagine – if rooms had no doors, homes would probably be designed to have entrances that didn’t face common pathways. Everybody can see you taking a shit in the toilet (then again, I’ve heard that happens in China). If rooms didn’t have entrances, we’d probably be using ladders to climb into them, so nobody could peek inside easily. That would make it a bitch to move anything heavy inside.
Homes would probably be designed vertically instead of horizontally – since we’d have to climb up or down into different rooms. Seems impractical to me, but I guess that’s why we have doors for a reason. Did you know the earliest record of doors can be traced back to the Egyptians? They were believed to be doorways to the afterlife. Today you learned something new! I know I did.
On the plus side, not having doors means we wouldn’t have broken doors. It would also mean people can’t run into doors (they can still run into walls) and doors can’t fall on people. I guess the lack of doors would mean fewer jobs in the world (we wouldn’t have locksmiths or door makers). Would the absence of doors mean no doors on vehicles as well? Hmm.
No doors would mean we wouldn’t have to deal with not knowing whether a door is supposed to swing towards or away from you or if it slides open. I’ve seen way too many people not following instructions on doors (pushing instead of pulling and vice versa). This problem has been eliminated in some places (by removing the handles from the side you’re supposed to push) but it isn’t a standard implemented worldwide – something I’ve wondered about for some time. I mean it makes so much sense – why would you want handles on the side where you’re supposed to push?
Having handles on the pushing side will prevent people from falling on their faces while opening doors, since they’ll have something to hold on to. But in my opinion, if you’re incapable of pushing a door open without wiping out, you’ve got bigger issues to deal with.
I’m looking forward to the day where we have some sort of membrane you can just walk through if you’re allowed to pass through it. It would also have the option to be transparent or opaque, depending on what you need it to be. This way you still get privacy when you want it. It will also have options to block out noise and retain/lose heat. I’m sure it’ll come soon. In my lifetime.