What's an example of a technology that in your opinion has become objectively worse than its analog from, say, 1995?

well for one there hasn't been any good music made since then

TenuredVulture wrote:Technology obviously will continue to progress. I'm just not sure any of us are going to benefit much from it. I simply think we've hit a kind of inflection point--over the last 10-15 years, we've seen amazing advances in usability and convenience, and the benefits have far outstripped the costs. I now see signs that that's over.

Furthermore, as everything becomes disposable (cheap junk) or virtual (in the cloud) we lose the tactile pleasures one gets from truly well engineered products. Computer keyboards are an obvious example.

where do things like gene sequencing, biotechnology and nanotechnology, etc. advances fall into this theory? is this a consumer product only theory?

I have never seen the computer keyboards aren't what they used to be take. Kudos, TV.

WheelsFellOff wrote:What's an example of a technology that in your opinion has become objectively worse than its analog from, say, 1995?

Probably nothing, though I have affection for SPSS v. 6 over its successors. The twenty year time frame really isn't my argument--a five year time frame would be more to the point. And even then, my concern really is about the direction things seem to be taking now--that we've had 20 years of amazing progress, but recent progress isn't really providing benefits at the same pace, while the costs are at best the same. It's like going from a flip phone to a smart phone is great. But each subsequent smart phone development is kind of meh.

I mean, do people really want the Amazon Dash? Is this the great thing about the future--I can press a button and get laundry detergent delivered to my door?

Youseff wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Technology obviously will continue to progress. I'm just not sure any of us are going to benefit much from it. I simply think we've hit a kind of inflection point--over the last 10-15 years, we've seen amazing advances in usability and convenience, and the benefits have far outstripped the costs. I now see signs that that's over.

Furthermore, as everything becomes disposable (cheap junk) or virtual (in the cloud) we lose the tactile pleasures one gets from truly well engineered products. Computer keyboards are an obvious example.

where do things like gene sequencing, biotechnology and nanotechnology, etc. advances fall into this theory? is this a consumer product only theory?

I don't have a problem with technology per se, it's what we're doing with it, and how we're not really thinking about whether the technology makes our lives better. Rather, technology seems to be more directed these days with increasing our needs, rather than satisfying them.

It seems like even Apple has run out of ideas.

I don't think people want dash. That's why it's not popular

Then there's still hope.

The smart phone thing is incorrect too. Minot only are smart phones leaps and bounds better than what we had in 2008, but you're also getting a competitive field from brands putting out great products at an inexpensive price

anyone ever take a coursera class? i saw one last night that interested me and it said 6-8 hours of time is needed per week. obviously i can just do what i feel but was curious how accurate those numbers are.

I think the rate of innovation in technology will likely slow (already has), but we'll still have lots of cool stuff coming our way. We've had by fare the greatest run in the history of mankind. Tough to keep up that pace.

Bucky wrote:I think the rate of innovation in technology will likely slow (already has), but we'll still have lots of cool stuff coming our way. We've had by fare the greatest run in the history of mankind. Tough to keep up that pace.

just you wait until we die and our brains are uploaded to virtual heaven and we live foreverrrrrrrrrrr

Finally got the wife (soon to be ex) to agree to split the phone lines up so we could take over each other's respective lines. Just had Verizon call her, and she agreed. She had been fighting me on it for a while.

Take a look at magnetic transistors. Once a viable architecture using these can be built to showcase their unique capabilities and benefits it could spark another wave of miniaturization and product convergence. Combine that with future developments in automated production, material sciences, quantum computing and AI and the possibility of household robotics doesn't really seem that farfetched. The big thing though is that the product niches we currently have are pretty well filled. All we're really seeing at the moment are iterative changes on existing things. There will be new things coming, though. It's just really hard to describe them since, you know, they don't exist.

WheelsFellOff wrote:Take a look at magnetic transistors. Once a viable architecture using these can be built to showcase their unique capabilities and benefits it could spark another wave of miniaturization and product convergence. Combine that with future developments in automated production, material sciences, quantum computing and AI and the possibility of household robotics doesn't really seem that farfetched. The big thing though is that the product niches we currently have are pretty well filled. All we're really seeing at the moment are iterative changes on existing things. There will be new things coming, though. It's just really hard to describe them since, you know, they don't exist.

This may be the optimistic perspective on what I see. Because really, the issue to me isn't the lack of computational power, but rather, the lack of good ideas of harnessing that power to make our lives better.

I think the other thing with technology today is it encourages us to prefer quantity over quality. While I don't really think music was better back during some mystical time in the past (I mean, We Built this City still reigns as the worst song every) I wonder if people care as much about what they listen to. If it's free and I'm just streaming a song for fun, I'll treat it as disposable. If by contrast I'm paying $15 for a CD I'm making a commitment as a listener, entering a kind of relationship with an artist.

Maybe that's why television seems to be a huge exception to all this (that is, it's almost inarguable that the quality of programming today is better than ever) we've always gotten our TV shows for free (pretty much) but we still have to make a time commitment to them. Furthermore, so many of the best shows are more like long running movies rather than discreet episodes, so if you start watching one, you're kind of making a commitment to watching it every week or whatever. (And here in my view is one obvious exception to the point I'm making) The DVR really is an excellent piece of technology that not only makes our lives better, but really is necessary for the kind of TV viewing many shows expect from their viewers these days.

Nattering about the level of mechanical technological "innovation" quickly runs aground, beached by a lack of attention to allllll of the other things that contribute to/retard "innovation" - social conventions of property, ownership, control, due process, etc.

In our current era, the stunted social worldview of our bright young "leaders" in Silicon Valley assures that infinitesimally "advanced" revisions of cheaply made-but-foolishly profitable cellphones, and apps for manipulating cat pictures on those phones, will be the face of tech innovation for the immediate future.

I'm not paying anywhere near free for the tv I watch

Some woman posted a video to Instagram of a target PA playing audio from porn


https://instagram.com/p/81BfcRwqLp/

hahahaha

My favorite part is from the description:
My 3 year old twins asked "is she hurt"