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Robots Without a Cause
WG55 writes "Have you noticed that more and more technology is more ingenious than useful? Stuart Jeffries of The Guardian writes in his article Robots without a cause that much technology produced today will change our lives little, if at all. He writes, 'Our response to being bored and rich is not to discard our possessions and live more simply, but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in which we might contemplate our shame.'"
From the article: The Audi A8's sensor, though, is more than a security device. After fingerprint identification, the car's computer tunes the radio to your favourite stations, the mirrors swivel according to your established preferences, and the driver's seat sculpts itself to your bottom.
Hmmmm, sculpted to my ass... Do they make a computer chair and/or couch potatoe model?
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
. . . write articles complaining about how it is being done.
The author cites a bunch of consumer-oriented gadgets as contemporary 'inventions' but seems to be intentionally ignoring the fact that _somebody_ has to pay for the development of these things. I may not want to buy a 3G phone, but I want a wind-up radio even less. If it isn't likely to sell, who will pay for development?
It is becoming more and more difficult to produce a new techology in your garage without serious funding. Many amateur (read: non-corporate funded) inventors start out to 'scratch an itch' because a product to do what they want isn't available. I'm spoiled enough that I don't spend much time contemplating how to grow food more effectively (or how to more efficiently meet my other basic needs), so I'm not likely to produce the next big invention that will make Mr. Jeffries happy.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
If you told someone in the 60's that the government was working on a giant computer network, would many have cared? Probably not. Heck, computers didn't seem to have much purpose to most people, then, either. They were something for the military, big business and sci-fi. But now, it's an essential part of many people's homes. It just takes time.
It's sad, really. Putting engineering into application is evil, I say!
Thanks to the newest wonders of technology we can get robots to do our vacuuming, transmit pictures on our mobile phones and unlock our cars (and adjust their seats) merely by touching them. In the face of this wizardry, Stuart Jeffries has only one question: why?
Because we can.
john
Over 30? Are you too old for slogans?
All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights
to the material world.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Forget GDP per capita, I think weâ(TM)ve found a new measure for quality of living! In all seriousness, I think the references to rich western culture bring up an interesting point: thereâ(TM)s no measure of a countryâ(TM)s wealth and the contentedness of its people in their lives like the amount of money they spend on amusements and distractions. The consumer crap index, made up of useless innovations, movie and sport industry revenues, and profits of haute-fashion shops for pre-teens.
Because dead people can't rant against technology. The one with the best technology will be the only one alive!
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
... woo woo, people aren't inventing what I want them too, and I can't do it myself because I can't do math.
By reading only the technophilic-sounding articles which are handwritten and hand delivered to me (that limits me to what, the Unabomber?), and ignoring anything which complains about the free exploration of technology but which was produced with a word processor and uses a global electronic network for distribution.
It's hard to predict what technology will change peoples' lives until after the fact.
Just because the author seems to believe all robots fall under the classification of useless gadgets doesn't mean the rest of us see them that way. This articles strikes of the typical attitude that non-technically-inclined people get when they see us geeks fiddling with robots.
The truth is, with the generation of people in their late teens and twenties, robots will be not only commonplace, but expected. We've grown up with the first wave of robot companions (Furby!) and it will be far from out of the ordinary for us to expect our vaccuuming to be done by AI.
Not everyone is ignorant enough to excuse robots as mere toys, their application will grow infinitely in the coming years and they will be all the more transparent in our day-to-day lives. Right now we're afflicted with a overflow of gimmick bots that give people the impression all they're only good for entertainment, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Just wait 10 years and see.
+ Donald Gunth
+ Email: dgunth@quicktek.net
"Caffeine is the greatest lubricant ever created." -ESR
That's what I thought too before I bought my TiVo with DirecTV service!
The US population is gaining weight at an alarming rate, with over half the population over their ideal weight.
<sarcasm>Surely stuff like this couldn't be the cause, could it?</sarcasm>
Tyler Durden says USE SOAP.
I think that the idea of robots is useful, even with what we have today. There have been robots that can mow the lawn for you, that can vacuum for you, and things along that line.
Things like Botball (kipr.org) really help to stimulate the idea of thinking about autonomous systems, and these are high school and sometimes middle school kids working on these projects. Sure, the contests that they run are really just getting the robots to move balls into cages and such, but the underlying point is a big deal. The future for robotics lies in autonomy, and it is a big problem.
It's rather difficult to get a system robust enough to last in an enviornment that you can only protect for as much as you predict (unless you plan on being able to "teach" the robot).
Maybe right now it seems like everything is just "ingenious", but there are some gems among it, and you just need to be a little more patient, the practical applications are the only ones that stick around in the end. Wait another 10 years, then see where we are.
Sig for GotSpider threatens to invade. France Surrenders.
I smell Katz...
...by Hans Christian Andersen, and all the ingenious "automata" of the nineteenth century, show, at least, that there is nothing new about the love of gadgetry for the sake of gadgetry.
It's probably a form of idolatry... that's a sin we're not very conscious of these days...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Only after widespread network and Internet adoption did personal computers realize the productivity gains that had been promised for three decades.
This question should have been answered fifteen years ago when the question "when will PCs fulfill there promise" was first asked. No one answered it then and I really doubt anyone will provide an insightful or informative answer now.
J. Bradford DeLong has an excellent article in the current issue of Wired discussing this very topic.
I used to wonder why Wired didn't have a "Comment on This Article" link after their postings. Then I realized that Slashdot provides that service for them.
I belive the answer is this: people who are pushing the boundaries pursue what is interesting to themselves. Many of these interests will be obscure and useful to only a few; that's human nature. But occasionally someone will come up with a brilliancy that affects all of humanity profoundly.
Electric and steam powered engines did that for the Industrial Revolution. The Internet and networking did that for the Personal Computing Revolution. What ever the next revolution is it will come faster and harder than any revolution in the past.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Every age has new ideas; some of which will last, and some which won't. The cutting edge ones invariably look pointless at the time.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Well, maybe he's right. But I must say that as far as problems go, this is a pretty good one to have.
(By the way, when electricity was first discovered, it was mostly used to amuse people by shocking them.)
Um....if you live in hurricane/tornado/blizzard prone areas your view on that "wind-up radio" might change. Their IS a market for that product and people will pay for it (and it's development/improvement). Just because 1 person doesn't like/see a use for that product doesn't mean it isn't there. This article misses the point that these "creature comforts" may not make people "happy" or "fufilled" but they make getting my ass outa bed in the morning that much easier. Once i've had my coffee from my auto-timered pot and a shower (using hot water from a water heater with a timer that's a hugh energy saver) i'll be a lot more prepared to go insearch of happiness/fufillment/my next caffine hit.
I think we may be headed towards a self-imposed matrix. I forget what game it is, maybe MOO2, that had virtual reality simulators for your citizens. Think Minority Report too, I think it was, where you can act out your every fantasy for a fee. What if technology like that becomes commonplace, where your every whim can be created and seem absolutely real? What kind of person would you be then? I can already see a kind of wilting away of life through my father, who just comes home from work and plays Everquest until it's time to go to bed. It truly is like he's leading a completely different life that he would much rather pay attention to than the real thing.
:)
I'm not Luddite by any means; I fully welcome every new technology that comes around. But I wonder if our descendants will merely plug themselves into a fantasy world that for all purposes, is real...and what kind of person would be able to resist it and continue advancement in the real world.
But maybe I'm just ranting
John Katz is back??
He who dies with the most toys wins.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Isn't this what ThinkGeek is for? My Aibo agrees with the author.
Of course we keep building more gadgets and robotic doodads, its just the natural order of things.
Think about it, how are the robots going to rise up and kill their human masters if we don't make enough of them?
Frankly I'm still waiting on those flying cars and maybe a robot housekeeper like on the "Jetsons".
Yes, there are things mankind should be doing. We should be going into space. We should be defeated viruses. We should be feeding the hungry.
But frankly, every government that has set out to promote equity between people has failed, usually badly. Humans are greedy, so just go with it. It works pretty well.
That's not to say that laws should be unfair; no government should act in an unethical manner. But neither should a government enforce morality, or the spending of the rich SOB's money. Let people buy what they want to buy and let the invisible hand sort it all out.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I agree that there's a large variety of consumer gadgets that are largely useless. I bought a 97 Geo Prizm for my last car only because my 85 Nissan Sentra gave out. I don't need a whole lot over a vehicle that works, has a radio and A/C.
But seriously, when it comes to health care or even stuff more trivial like music production, bring on the tech. Yes, sometimes you can do great things with a stethoscope and/or and acoustic guitar, and sometimes I'm content with that. But other times, it's a tool that enables you to do cool things you never could have w/o it. I'm all for Sonograms and Synthesizers. I'm healthier and happier because of both....
Tweet, tweet.
I've always wondered what George Boole's fellow mathematicians must have thought about him speding so much time developing an algebra based on only two numbers. And I believe that when Joseph Fourier presented his work to the academy of sciences showing that any function could be represented as an infinite sum of sine and cosine functions, the result was a big yawn from everyone.
While I look at a lot of modern technology as useless yuppie crap, there's something to be said about the relentless pursuit of scientific and technological advancement.
GMD
watch this
'Our response to being bored and rich is not to discard our possessions and live more simply, but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in which we might contemplate our shame.'
Hmmmm, a society that is based on spending $ on crap they dont need is setting itself up for disaster........one should learn to be content as possessions bring only "short term" happiness.
Who's dated philosophy? Buddha.
Having read thru the article, I think that this individual wanted nothing more than to Rant on for a couple of pages about how all of the current group of top notch inventors do nothing but make devices to make technology a little bit more personalized. Insofar as the Rant on 3G phones go, they only really take notice of sales of the devices in the UK, which has nothing to do with their sales in other places where the phones were received extremely well, like japan and some places in Central Europe, like Germany. In short, this seems to me like nothing more than a rant against extravagance in technology due to the fact that the author thinks that the time would be better spent trying to improve the life of the impovershed.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
The author seems not to have much perspective as to how different people might view particular gadgets. A robotic vaccuum cleaner sounds great to me, since I've got 3 kids under the age of 16 months and hence a titanic workload just to keep the house under control.
The question for all of these gadgets is whether or not enough people find them useful and affordable to make the R&D investment worthwhile. This is inherently a risky proposition, so there will tremendous hits (DVD) and flops (Iridium)...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The author is the life of the party, I'm sure.
I completely agree. There are more and more gadgets out there, and more of them do nothing to enhance lifestyle. Every time I hear someone say "I can't live without x", I'm thinking, shit, that's sad. Personally, I live by the Tyler Durden lifestyle. I only have what I need. My life is full enough without extra shit. My life is whittled down to the basics, so I only concentrate on what's important. Gadgets are just used to fill voids in empty lives.
I recently made a $60 investment in a tiller garden utensils and plants (onions, peppers, tomatoes, mellos, and corn) and planted them a new garden in my back yard.
Granted gardening is far from new technology, but a tiller that weighs no more than 20 pounds and can still cut through 8 inches of earth? That's a pretty good feat of technology. I really enjoy the fact that what used to take an entire weekend now only takes me 25 minutes.
While the technology may not have a huge impact on our lives it does bring about more time for leisure. Some of us spend 9 hours a day at work, come home and clean the house (because we couldn't before work), make dinner, and then notice we have maybe 2 hours tops of free time before we have to get to bed and do it all again the next day.
Technology has made it easier for us to be able to actually relax and release stress from us. To not have to worry about the lawn because you placed a chemical that causes it to grow stronger and less fast or to be able to not have to worry about the house because a new weatherproof paint won't fade peel or chip. It's these "simple" things that we may not notice, but we also don't notice the impact they have on us. It can take an entire weekend to plant a garden, take care of a lawn, or paint a house.
It's technology that makes it possible for us to have more time to enjoy life.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
It's about a cultural obsession with temporary diversion and amusement in novelty.
Shockingly, he supposes that lasting value in life might come from knowing oneself better, and that real sources of happiness are pusued with fewer contemplative distractions.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Did anyone else think it was strange that after a few pages complaining about how terrible these inventions are, you get 3 pages of information on how much they all cost?
Twostep
There are 10 different types of people in this world... those who understand binary, and those who don't.
I hardly think more useless things are invented these days than a hundred years ago. Hasn't everyone been to one of those museums or seen a TV show on all of the useless gadgets people have made in the past? This guy needs to get a clue and stop trying to occupy the "moral" high-ground when it comes to the things that are invented these days. Of course a lot of stuff is useless -- who f**king cares??? Just don't buy it if it's useless. That's the way invention works, there are always more bad ideas than good ones. There are no fewer people working on things that matter these days than there ever was. And he has the gall to mention inventing the wheel??? How is that even relevant in today's world? Has he ever thought about the possibility that as society evolves there are simply fewer "wheels" to invent? This guy's a f**king idiot.
Is there anyway I could have read this article earlier? I mean, I could hardly wait to read this article and the wait nearly gave me an infarction.
Get a new career? Oh yes, everyone should do that. I'm sure that garbage men are in it because they love the excitement of garbage, and not because it is the way they afford food and a roof over their heads. I'm sure that all the janitors in the world feel the same about sanitation. Why doesn't everyone just work doing what they love? I'm sure the world would run swimmingly.
If someone wants to get home from a hard day of work (ever notice how they don't call it happy-fun-time?) and wants to play a game of Splinter Cell why is it the business of some over paid, stuck up, hack who probably wonders why I don't just jet off to Singapore whenever I feel bored?
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
He's victim to a common fallacy -- that there's a finite amount of stuff in the world and one can only have TV-glasses at the expense of one's neighbor going without shoes. It's unimaginable to him that if we "discard our possessions and live more simply", the people who make and sell drink-pouring robots will be going without possessions too, as will whoever depends on them for a living.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
hahah.
...and they're not even the same luxuries I want! Don't they know that there are people starving, and dying of diseases?
This kind of bootless diatribe is as old as language. Expect part 2, "People Were Better When I Was Young," next week.
Yes, but the network they were building had great potential, and those working on it knew that. I don't think that people engineering a car to conform to the shape of your butt are envisioning great social and technological advances.
One of the sadest things to me is that corporations will finance projects they believe will have the best return on investment. The little gadgets and features that have been added to the Audi may not change the world, but Audi is banking on those features bringing in more revenue. Very few corporations with the financial backing to endorse inventions that "could" change the way we do things in the world are willing to take the risk that such an expenditure requires. Sure, maybe the world would be better off in many facets of daily life if financiers began to look at the needs of a society that they are capable of meeting, instead of just bringing in more wealth. The idea of corporations or those with vast financing power contributing their wealth to inventions of consequence is great, but just like some of the good ideas within socialism it cannot account for one factor...human nature.
This all sounds great fun, but only in a society where all our basic needs are met could we be so pleasurably diverted by gadgets. It's not only fun to be excited by the latest gadget, it gives us the feeling too that we're part of the forward flow of life. It also gives us something easy to talk about: we make connections with people by discussing what our gadgets can do, even by laughing at our own silliness.
He has a point. Look back at the inventors of the really useful devices (like the steam engine, the airplane, electricity, lightbulb, etc.), and see how many of these were invented in the "won't it be cool to do this!" spirit, and how many were in the "if I invent this, it will change the future!" spirit.
It could be that today, thanks to the ubiquitous media, the "gadget" inventions are getting a lot more coverage than the "earth-shattering" inventions. In the old days, these "gadget" inventions probably never made it out of the inventor's shack.
~The wind up radio? Trevor Bayliss developed it at his own cost, and Christopher Staines and South African entrepreneur Rory Stear put up the finance to make production a reality. Previously, people had to spend more on batteries than they did on the radio. Batteries are more expensive and less reliable in rural Africa than they are in the rich parts of the world.
Are they any use? Read this and make your mind up. But I'd say they're a damn sight more useful to many more people than a 3G phone.
Have you noticed that more and more technology is more ingenious than useful?
We're reading Slashdot. How could we not notice?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Nobody here is working on a new energy source, highly secure or reliable computers, a way out of the "race for the bottom" in wages, or a fuel cell technology that works. No, it's stuff like "sales force support automation".
There's interest in biotech, but it's mostly from Jim Clark, who made money from SGI (tanked), Netscape (tanked), and Healtheon (tanked). Not a good sign.
We're doing something terribly wrong. Median income (US urban wage earners, constant dollars) peaked in 1973. (It's quite hard to find those numbers today, incidentally.)
He completely ignores the fact that incredible things have been accomplished in this age of gadgets he deems pointless. Does he really think the most inovative thing in this modern era is a wind up radio? What about genetic engineering, hybrid cars, nuclear fusion, nanotechnology, etc...? The scary part is, there must be a lot of people like him for this drivel to be published.
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
ooh, does the robot pick things up as well? What, it just vacuums empty bit of carpet? Not going to be much use to either of us then, I'm afraid. So it's just a toy, a gadget. For many people who really need something to do the vacuuming for them - i.e. you - it has serious flaws.
All new technology is first monetized in the sex industry. Sony just messed up in coming out with a toy dog first.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
Bad example, the internet(arpanet, etc.) started small, and grew. The idea that unviersities and military could share data is a good idea even now. You might complain about the price but why would you complain about the principle.
That being said just because some of the things in the article are useless to the author, doesn't mean they are useless to everyone.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
This has been known for a loooong time, and is for example explained in great detail by Voltaire in "Les pensées": "Du divertissement" (Thoughts: About entertainment).
Go contemplate your own shame while I rent some DVDs and ignore you.
I don't think the US won Vietnam. Technology is only a tool, its not who has the best technology, but who uses it the best.
Granted, it would be damn hard for the Vietcong to win if they were using crossbows instead of AK's. However, their lack of technology probably gave them numerous advantages.
The war on terrorism has many parallels to the Vietnam war, yet we are winning it (last year had that least terrorist incidents in the last 30 years.. or something like that.) You bet damn well our application of superior technology is giving us a big advantage in that one.
Rant against technology? Talk to Ted Kaczynski about that.
Yet, you'll still find a majority of people don't think the internet is really very important. If it wasn't for e-mail, most people wouldn't want it.
Sorry, you won't even be able to communicate with the Unabomber. When the Fed's raided his shack, they found the typewriter which was used to produce the Manifesto.
Granted, there are useless things created - but this author comes off as overly critical of tinkering and creative inventionism. He supports the telephone as a "life altering" and "good thing" creation - but how would he feel about the latest VOIP software that allows far flung family memebers to communicate with each other? And how about the camera? It's good right? But when we go to digital photography, it must be wasteful narcissism, never mind all of the saved pape, chemicals and money. Some of the most impactful and useful in history come from unbridled curiousity and exploration in what is possible... All in all a baloney article with a we-are-too-rich-and-fat-angst ridden tone. -AC
does anyone ever ask you about Jerry Cornelius, the Michael Moorcock fictional hero ? Every time I see your name I flash back to those books, the Cornelius Quartet.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
My life is whittled down to the basics, so I only concentrate on what's important. Gadgets are just used to fill voids in empty lives.
And what is a 'full' life, pray tell?
Seriously, what do the self-righteously self-deprived do with their copious free time?
My life is filled with useless shit, and you know what? I love it! I am *extremely* content with all my CDs of music (more and more coming from independent labels, as that's where the interesting stuff is), my shelves and shelves of escapist SF, my Tivo full of Farscape re-runs (damn you, sci-fi, for cancelling this great show!), my office full of computer-geek stuff.
Once I lived the spartan life, and I thought great thoughts, and I wrote great stories. I was published once in a while, but eventually the rejection slips became more frequent, and more magazines went belly-up.
And what did I realize? I'm gonna die, and everything I know is going to die with me. So I spend time with friends when I can, and have fun at all times.
And I love the little shit that pervades my life.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
kill him.
And while you're at it, whack Jesus and Mohammed too. They're all meddlesome pricks; worthless shamans with nothing to offer but mysticism.
What a whiner.
I made it through maybe half the article and get bored with it. Maybe a robot to read his articles would be something he'd approve of.
We pretty much have our bases covered with things that we need. There are not food shortages in the civilized nations of the world., we are able to provide for everyone on the planet with leftovers on top of that (minus political influences). We have the basic technology to live anywhere on the planet that is inhabitable and many places inhabitable. There are no more physical frontiers beyond space for us.
However, when you figure in that in 8000 - 12000 years we have gone from living from the land we could till to just starting to reach outer space, I'd say we've done pretty well. Its fair for folks to take a bit of luxury in life.
Once food production was not a worry, everything after that has been fluff. Do we need cars? Nah. Do we need anything that specialized labor grants us? Han, but its nice.
Do we need to have a cause? Maybe. As a Christian I believe it is serving God in the capacity he sees fit. Do others need to have a cause to believe in for focus on? I dunno. Some folks just want to eat, drink, and be merry for tommorrow they die. Perhaps that is their purpose.
Why does this fellow feel he needs to fire us up for anything? As that does seem to be his issue here. Or more important to me is, why does he seem to think we need firing up, when many already see advances even without groundbreaking advances.
Medicine for instance is always advancing. Personally I think this is a great thing. It may not affect me every day, but it certainly will be important the next time I need surgery or come down with an illness.
I know a couple folks that work on review mirrors that auto tint when a car with its high beams are behind you are blinding you. Is that fluff or a safety measure in this guys book?
Intel and AMD are designing incrementally faster processors everyday, is that fluff or real research? By faster processors we can evaulate and process data faster, maybe to help advance medicine.
Ah, heck, enough. Sounds like this guy simply is a lost soul who is really lacking in life. Maybe he needs to find a cause to live for, I think many other people have their causes to live for.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Adults that never had it can live without it as they did for most of their lives, but you have kids growing up with it who can't seperate it from their lives. I'm in my mid-20's, but I've had a computer from the time I was 4 or 5, so it's always been a part of my life.
Ahh, the good old days...
Gasp! Get back to work on the gardening on the courtyard dias before I whip you more! Between you, the French, and Charlotte Wren, I know not which one will befall our great civilization.
This space for rent.
it has been my experience that it is impossible to get a robot to do the simplest things. navigation among clutter, picking up an object, etc. are all research topics. people usually get results in very narrowly defined environments.
periodically when i hear about people at places like the MIT media lab making robots have feelings, it makes me quite annoyed, since it is such a ridiculous topic. hard robotics problems get ignored, and the media doesn't ever write stories about the limitations of robots, which are enourmous.
The problem is capitalism and its current crisis of abundance. People don't get paid unless they work. The essentials people really need can be produced with a fraction of the work force - maybe 20%. The rest build or service extravagant trickets. Non-renewable resources are wasted to provide diversions so that people can be employed so that they can buy mostly trinkets. Meanwhile people starve because they are in the third world and not participants in the trinket economy. No stopping it. This all has a momentum of its own like a hurricane. Enjoy your video games and slashdot while you still have electricity.
This story is so inane that I'm refusing to troll it. I'm going back to Mac OS X NWN Technology Demo Released.
But I tripped on my Roomba and fell on my battlebot...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
When is luxury not luxury? When it's available 24x7, at every mall and shopping centre, in every town, and every state. Then that's just plain decadence, endemic to an entire country. Technology is a tool like any other, creating wonderful things, but also some socially desructive, needless things, ususally produced at the expense of some Third World country. Look at the 5000 children dying each month of Malaria, and tell me you need an automatic hoover.
Sometimes I feel ashamed to be in the country I am.
consumerist technological zeitgeist
what does that mean? well that means that the author believes that our society likes to buy gadgets. but he can't just say that, because that would make sense. He has to make up ism's and reference Neitzsche. Remember, more syllables equals more better.
The Guardian is clearly the product of over-education. If he must rant about Americans being wasteful because we're "rich and bored, and have plenty of disposable income" why doesn't the author point the finger to his years of expensive schooling. For clearly that was a total waste of time as well.
If only the Guardian had grown up in a more impoverished country. He could be spending his time in the fruitful pursuits of agrarian farming, rather than wasting our time with this drivel.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Wrong, the one with the best technology (who uses it competently) will always win. We didn't use our best technology (nuclear) because of other factors. Technology always trumps, and those who disagree can't argue long because they'll be dead.
Dead people don't debate.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
"...I've got 3 kids under the age of 16 months..."
That's either triplets or one hell of a woman.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
"The proper answer, surely, is that while interplanetary exploration is conceivably a noble human aspiration, needing a robot to pour your pop is the hallmark of the idle ponce."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I know it's form to reply with, "Yes! Me too!" but what can I say, you nailed it. Maybe if more people reply with "You nailed it!" you'll get those highly sought mod points :@)
Hyperic Community Manager
Scores of replies are the equivalent of "screw this guy!"
We're a bit defensive about this, aren't we? The strong replies are very telling. I have realized there is more to life than acquiring needless possessions. Yet I fall victim to gadgetitis all the time. It is what a 20-something single guy is expected to be interested in. I am perfectly aware of it and it still happens. But at the same time I wasn't offended by anything the author of the article wrote.
A previous post mentioned that it is a form of idolatry, and I have to agree. It is basically the modern-day equivalent of the pursuit of wealth.
I think that this article pushed some people in a way that they don't want to be pushed. Hence the strong responses.
He writes, 'Our response to being bored and rich is not to discard our possessions and live more simply, but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in which we might contemplate our shame.'
Huh? What? That really came out of left field. I don't see how I'm supposed to feel shame if I'm bored, or rich. Perhaps the author can point me in the direction of some of these shamed millionaires so I can help relieve them of their problem.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Ronco.
This is in my opinion, - just the way of the nature. By coming up with new ideas new theories new âoegadgetsâ, those again will nurse new ones that might prove to be useful, or just forgotten. Think my point is that with all you clever engineers and inventors out there, someone might find inspiration to really revolutionize the world. Like that the usless âoegadgetâ served its greater purpose.
You confuse meaningful, basic-research with mere productization, or development engineering.
My whole point was that the development of Boolean algebra or Fourier series wasn't "meaningful" at the time. It was just a curiosity. As far as the distinction between "basic" research and "development engineering", I'm not sure why you feel that's important. Many important problems get solved as special cases before some bright individual realizes that there is a more fundamental basic principle at work. A silly little beeping trinket may require the engineers to solve some new, very specialized problem. You never know if the lessons learned by solving that problem might carry over and provide insight or be applicable to another, not nearly so trivial technology.
I am sad that there isn't enough money going towards basic research. But there's no use crying about it. I knew a mathematican who worked at Honeywell. He was supposed to be solving a specific control problem but would often divert his energy towards playing with more general, but still related problems. When I asked him how he could get away with doing that, his response was "Well, my bosses have to put up with a little of that if they want me to work for them." Obviously, that was meant as a joke but I think his bosses probably realized that there is a healthy cross-fertilization between working on very applied problems and taking a step back and thinking about the bigger picture. It is my belief that effort expended on developing these yuppie trinkets can find application in other, more important areas.
GMD
watch this
Rule of thumb: People who start discussion board posts with âoeUmâ¦Blaw, blaw, blawâ¦â are generally idiots.
I have a Fisher Space Pen, which I love. The Space Pen was created to solve the proble of how to allow astronuts to write in a zero G enviorment. It uses and pressurized cartrige and an ink with and intergrated adhesive. The Russians faced with the smae problem used pencils.
The innovations of the Spac Pen contributed to new uses in comercail pens, and therefore contributed to the technology base.
If necessity is the mother of inventionm, then cleverness is it's father. The fantasical examples of '50s "labor saving devices of the future" are examples of such inanities that proved to inspire good design, by at a minimum counter-example.
The persuit of technology is good, because economic growth is good. What the artical is really railing against is consumerism. it is capital folly to link the eschewing of consumerism to luditeism. Economics in it's basic form is the process of taking resources from lower to higher valued uses. The is only 2 way to do that in my mind, transportation and improvement. Both are inexorably tied to technology. All socailist delusions aside, the best and most effective way of improving everyones lives is through free(ish) markets. The wonder of free markets is that we let people do stupid things with their cash.
Spyder
In a sense, its just another form of evolution. New types of devices will "evolve" and if they are successful they will live on. If not they will die and be forgotten.
Just because some things fail doesn't mean the process is useless. The next big idea will probably be something most of us couldn't have imagined.
Damn could you give someone a shock if you were to hack their car.
*POKE*
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Wow, you'd trust your three young children around an expensive robotic vacuum cleaner? They'd wreck it for sure! Are you sure you have a 15-month old child?
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
Of COURSE the Guardian would lament technology, since it's done things like lift people out of poverty, misery, subsistance-level existence, and allowed them to live free, independent, productive lives. Where then is the necessity of the Left's tribal- and collectivism?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I recently bought a GPS unit. Unless you are flying, boating or crossing a trackless waste, these are not so much useful as cool.
It is a toy. I admit it. However, I am using this toy for Geocaching. This may or may not be your cup of tea, but it certainly isn't sedentary. (Geocachers seem to love putting the cach on the top of all the highest hills they can find.)
One BIG thing the author of this article misses is that you never know what oddball technology that SEEMS like a kid's toy might end up being The Next Big Thing.
-Teckla
ooh, does the robot pick things up as well? What, it just vacuums empty bit of carpet? Not going to be much use to either of us then, I'm afraid. So it's just a toy, a gadget. For many people who really need something to do the vacuuming for them - i.e. you - it has serious flaws.
So pick the stuff up yourself. You have to do that anyways. Then let the robot go to work. Or design a seperate robot that goes around picking stuff up before the other robot gets around to vacuuming the area.
--Drunk as in Beer
In case the site gets /.ed into oblivion, the most relevant piece goes like this...
Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have LOTS OF TIME. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard.
Does anyone else feel like this? How much of the time do we spend stressing out on work-related pressure is born of necessity and how much is just for gaining status? Or better yet, how much of it is to feed an economic machine that depends on convincing us that killing ourselves to get useless stuff is worth more than the piece of mind we could achieve without actively pursuing said stuff in the first place. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the world who notices there is a problem here yet I have to suffer under a lot of needless pressure because of others who demand everything "right now" without a thought of why. It wouldn't surprise me if the medical advances made possible by the current economic system are outnumbered by the health problems it caused due to work-related stress. Fuck, I'd rather die 10 years earlier than I would normally if it means that I get to relax and enjoy myself some while I was alive.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Shockingly, he supposes that lasting value in life might come from knowing oneself better, and that real sources of happiness are pusued with fewer contemplative distractions.
Not to sound like a nihilistic hedonist, but... there is no lasting value in life.
In due time, we will all die.
The only lasting value in life is the joy we derive from life; our only real duty in life is to increase the amount of joy experienced by others.
The path to death may be joyous or somber or angry; but it cannot be avoided. Every step you take is one step closer to the ultimate demise.
Knowlege is only valuable inasmuch as it contributes to your joy, and the joy of those whom you affect. I enjoy intellectual conversation, and so I value those who seek knowlege.
But are the real sources of happiness pursued with fewer contemplative distractions? For some, yes. For others, no. Me, I'm not arrogant enough to assume my inner complexity requires constant contemplation. I think I have myself figured out fairly well. Occassionaly, I reconsider who I truly am; but for the most part, I merely exist, and enjoy that existence.
But, YMMV, of course. But to assume your purpose in life is another's purpose is the worst kind of self-important drivel in existence.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I can't believer all of you are talking about Robots when 7,680 copies of the new Harry Potter book were stolen over the weekend! Have you no shame?
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Oh wait... isn't progress cause enough?
Um, I hate to break it to you, but that's not a fallacy.
There really is a finite amount of stuff in the world. Raw materials, land area, energy, and labor are all limited quantities.
So we should all keep mindlessly consuming more and more stuff, burying the planet in our shit, working longer and harder to buy things we never really wanted in the first place, so that people who make drink-pouring robots can keep their jobs? No.
The problem is a fundamental flaw in our economic theory. We must realize that endless growth is not only not desirable, but not even possible. Endlessly growing production requires endlessly growing consumption, which means either an endlessly growing population (impossible on a finite planet) or a population whose lives become endlessly devoted to consumption.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
And why, pray tell, should we feel ashamed of being so?
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!" - a dog
Infomercials are the best showcase of the truly innovative inventions of our modern time. Where else can you learn about the roto-till, the latest hair-removal cream, the newest ab-exerciser and the best and last set of knives you'll ever have to buy, ever! (until next year)
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Shame? Nah, that's why we all have our very own Electric Monk!
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
What? He didn't? He should have!
("Another is to distract us from the shame we feel about our decadent lifestyles.")
Yup, we've all heard it before, including the guilt trip. I wonder why these people not only think that we have to be ashamed of our wealth, but also assume that we are ashamed? Every time you're enjoying your wealth, buying useful or useless crap, giving money to charities or whatever, it's always "you're just covering up your guilt".
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
No, they're just working with greenpeace.
Let's see how badly I loose karma.
Most of the comments here are fully about debate of the usefulness and or purpose of new gadgets. I think some folks are so wrapped up in the tech-geek culture that they may be missing the larger point of the article.
What I took from it was that we are turning into our worst nightmares of ourselves. A world where we sit in front of some sort of box all day staring at it as it spews messages about what is right and wrong and the proper way to live our lives. Many of the gadgets we are creating only feed our laziness, giving us more free time to stare at the box. We get fat from the food we cram into our faces while staring at the box for the next proper thing to do. The message I continually receive from the media (maybe itâ(TM)s just my tinfoil hat) is that Iâ(TM)m in some way not OK. That Iâ(TM)m too fat, too ugly, not cool or a bad ass or some other inferiority. However, their nifty little XYZ will fix my world and I just canâ(TM)t live without it. I just donâ(TM)t like other telling me how I should think, especially about myself. Sorry for the diatribe, I guess my fears are that the marketing departments now tell the engineers what to build rather than marketing what theyâ(TM)ve builtâ¦
- vphl
its important for people with money to spend it, so that people without money can earn it. I also hear people criticizing the rich for spending money on useless stuff. Well, guess what? That money is being transferred to other people which is a good thing. So let them buy their toys, big houses, and expensive cars, the respective industries will benefit from it. In some respects (such as expensive cars), this is fueling R&D.
--Drunk as in Beer
Maybe he's Mormon, you racist bastard!
I think that's 'women'.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
I'll bet he's read Siddhartha a half dozen times.
Consume less, spend more time getting in touch with roots, people; i-net chat is bad, real face to face... bla bla bla. Sounds like an anti-progressivist (sp?) (think Amish, fundemantalist Muslim, old school Hindu, etc.)
The golf cart takes away a would be great source of excercise... And allows my 84 year old grandfather to golf at all. There's another side to most of these things, they don't all lead to sloth and a decrease in human interaction. It's a change, deal with it.
And, Siddhartha, if you have a problem with how we like to consume sell your worldly belongings and get in touch with yourself. But you're not going to influence me to do it.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
grin
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the author can frankly go fsck himself.
Plenty of similar arguments are made about the "worthlessness" of space travel, but what people often tend to ignore is the exponential effect of pure scientific research on useful technology development, not to mention the technological spinoffs from space technology research.
"Contemplate our shame," indeed. He's the one who should be ashamed of himself.
+++ATH0
For example:
Roomba == gadget, refrigerator == technology
Prism glasses == gadget, clean water == technology (though it's pretty sad when you need tech. to get clean water)
fingerpad openning car door == gadget, fingerpad denying access to the wrong people at your local nuke generating station == technology
computer playing games == gadget, computer mapping out molecules to combat malaria == technology
Now that West Nile virus is a concern in North America, research is being focused on transmission of diseases by mosquitos. Sorry, but this is not being done at the expense of any Third World country, and the offshoots should benefit them.
I don't need an automatic hoover, but maybe some quadragenarian who is trying to remain autonomous does. There is a middle road here.
Me, I'm just wondering how they pulled off three kids in 16 months. There have to be twins or triples involved somehow.
For the record, that's twins (3/4/2002) and a little brother (3/28/2003), and yes, that is one hell of a woman!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
...that three of the things he brought up as overhyped, useless toys, are the makings of something that will drastically change the way we live?
...and you have the technology for realtime internet and mixed reality in your sunglasses. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that, worthwhile or not, such wearable computing will become a cornerstone of our perception of the world pretty damned soon.
Combine:
1. 3G phones
2. video glasses
3. micro-sized digital storage
I'd call that at least an order of magnitude above idle gadgetry.
The Article Said
Yes and I'm sure anyone who has lost a limb would be much more interested in going to mars then they would be about having a fully articulated robot arm.
The Article Said
Okay what is this guy smoking? There is no way that advertisements projected onto people's windshields will ever be allowed. The amount of problems that would cause to motorists would be way to high exspecially [sic] as sue happy as the average trial lawyer is today. Also what do police sirens and car alarms have to do with it? Sirens serve a very useful purpose by allowing emergency vehicles to get to where they are needed. Car alarms however should be banned. They don't really do much good. (IMO)
The Article Said
Then don't buy the product. Thats the whole purpose behind capitalism.
The Article Said
An automatic vacuum cleaner equipped with a gun to shoot people that break into my house. (Or track dirt on the floor) Hmmm.. Maybe I should patent that.
The Article Said
Oh yes! Brilliant! We're rich so we should just sell everything and just sit around enjoying ourselves. No don't buy anything, that would be bad. After all money isn't supposed to make you happy its only supposed to make you feel bad about those who have less than you. After all if you bought something then some of that money might spill over to some poor guy who invented a body heat powered personal fan or something, and then he would be rich and bored too.
"when will PCs fulfill there promise" The word you're looking for here is their, meaning 'belonging to them'. An easy way to remember this is "I have possessions, therefore "their" with an I is possessive." I notice you used it correctly when you said "...link after their postings.", was this just a typo, or were you covering your bases? Magical Grammar Dust for you: ..,'"';,.';,.,`~
-GrammarFairy
People still want luxury. How is this news?
People like luxury to set themselves apart from others, to exhibit their dominance over other [wo]men (insert caveman mating reasoning here). Now that most Americans can get luxury, the top of the top want even more luxurious items to set themselves apart...
Well fortunately, they do sleep at the same time. Once they're all down for the count, picking up the toys takes maybe 2-3 minutes. But after a day at work and the hectic dinner/playtime/cribtime cycle, the last thing I want to do is sling a vacuum cleaner around the house...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
They guy has caught the basic truth that there's a lot of solutions looking for problems out there in the tech world, but so what? My eight year old nephew has figured that one out. Is it wrong to innovate for the sake of innovation? Does every thought need a definable purpose that serves THE PEOPLE[tm]? A lot of useful and life saving technologies grew out of idle tinkering in a lab somewhere.
Enough with the technoangst already, and the bemoaning of our oh-so-hideous-so-empty-argh-so-very-depressinbgly- HUMAN Western culture. Honestly, this guy sounds like any disillusioned tech head I know when they aren't getting laid enough.
--- Ban humanity.
I program all day, but don't have a cellphone, and I don't even use a computer at home. Maybe one of these days I will figure out how to set the time on our VCR.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Can we have a Slashdot filter to filter out all stories that come from the Guardian? I mean jeez, has there ever been a worse tech rag?
So, what the blowhard at the London Business School is saying is that in our terrorism-filled future, everyone's an entrepreneur. Everyone with a 3G phone, of course.
Good evening, and welcome to America's Funniest Home Terrorism Videos!
This may be the most deeply cynical post-911 spin yet to crawl out of the right wing mind. It makes our own Homeland Security honchos, with their fever dreams of Total Information Awareness, seem amateurish. Think big, fellas. It's time to unite the policy of scaring the public out of its wits with the glories of trickle-down economics. Dare to dream of a future in which technology allows us all to get a piece of the action in the next big terrorist attack!
Many of the car related devices the article refered to are excelent for someone who is disabled, and I am sure the technology can be applied to more "usefull" applications.
The power door, self adjusting seat and the keyless entry all make lots of sense for someone who is disabled (whether a wheelchair user, or with arthritis, etc...).
The fingerprint scanner could save a single women from being mugged after dropping her keys.
The real uses often don't justify the price tag of development, but the leasure uses provide the needed funding.
Perhaps he was dictating?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Don't you know what causes those things yet? ;)
Someone who added driving time, other time spent (cleaning, filling up, waiting for the garage etc) and the time spent working to pay for capital and operating costs determined that the average driver manages to go about 3 miles for each hour spent in or on their car.
This is the most myopic article on technology I haven't finished reading in a long time. The examples that contradict, counter, and overpower is rather arbitrary list of consumer electronics and TV-ad gadgets, is staggeringly huge.
In short, this doesn't merit even a mention, because the only thing it is an example of, besides this guy's relative lack of insight in to the nature of invention and the applicability of technologies, techniques, and innovation, is that Slashdot editors, by putting this on the home page, want to stir as much pseudo-controversy as your average newspaper editor.
Blah! Blah!
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
My biggest issue with "gadgets" and other assorted technology is that we want to express our personality in terms of the technology we possess. When I was in high school, everyone that was "cool" had a pager, and the really "cool" ones had custom faceplates. Now it's cell phones and wireless devices, but the drive is still the same: always have the latest and greatest to prove your "coolness". This is what seems frivolous to me.
Now, I am a geek and love to play with toys as much as the next person, and am probably being a hypocrite to say what I did above. But think of the technological gadgets in Star Wars (or even Star Trek) now. It wasn't the cool gadgets that the characters used that made them so cool to me, it was the characters themselves. Luke wasn't all about having the new "Model 4000 Light Sabre" with the built in camera and fingerprint activation switch so he could be cooler. He was all about fighting the empire.
<my bad>Just a rant.</my bad>
It's hard to tell the cool to chill, my favorite hotel room has a view to an ill.
The saddest part of Jeffries' article is that, right in the middle of all the whining, he touches on, and promptly drops, an aspect of modern gadget-mania that is worth getting his shorts in a knot over: Machines (usually) require instruction to use properly, (usually) require routine maintenance, and (always) break, eventually. All of which place a burden on their owner. The more machines one owns, the greater this burden becomes. For those whose interest in technology is in any way practical, imho there's a point of diminishing returns past which the time spent cleaning, tuning, fixing, exchanging, and studying manuals to figure out how to use the damn things simply isn't worth the benefit gained from them. Anyone care to speculate whether billg has at least one person on staff full-time just to keep his super-duper "smart home" running? Given the amount of time I spend just changing batteries in smoke alarms, remote controls, et al, I'd lay money on it.
And yeah, the learning curve is often part of the fun - that's probably why most of us got into computers in the first place. My gripe is over being forced into that mode when my goal is for the thing to just work when I power it on. When a lousy telephone comes with a 150-page user's guide that you must read and understand in order to call someone, imho some fundamental rethinking is in order.
If Jefferies had to vent, this is what he should have vented about.
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
Robot vaccuums are pointless. Electrolux spent 10 years developing a product that was poorly conceived of from the start. Any engineer worth his/her salt would realize that the correct solution would be a new floor material with all the good properties of carpet that was self-cleaning!
Don't design a better/faster iron - design wrinkle-proof fabrics!
Don't try to grow more food to feed the world - replace the human stomach with a fuel cell and nobody will need to eat again!
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Well, it was IVF in the first case, and as for the second, astounding good luck!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Or perhaps i just havn't had enought coffee yet today. :)
Well, this is the Guardian, which means itâ(TM)s your average cultural snob, elitist leftie whinging and whining about how modern life is sooooooooooo bad because we, the unwashed, unsophisticated masses spend too much time with our crass, petty little toys and not enough time brooding over the existential meaning of âoewhat it all means.â
Translation: theyâ(TM)re a bunch of fucking twats.
Let Stuart Jeffries climb a pole and ponder his bloody navel, Iâ(TM)ve got cars to steal in GTA:VC.
Why did this get modded up? It's the same kind of blithering high school banter we've been having to put up with on /. since that crap Reloaded film came out. People PLEASE get it through your heads already. Noone wants to hear you spew your BAD sci-fi psychobabble. It's not relevant to the discussion at hand and it's making you look like a junior higher taking pot for the first time, contemplating the existance of twinkies.
"Knowlege is only valuable inasmuch as it contributes to your joy, and the joy of those whom you affect. "
Thanks for the insight!
Reminds me of a saying I heard many years ago "the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder".
For years I'd only thought of it only refering to one person, but as you say one person's knowledge can increase other peoples' joy.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
Is it just me, or is the word "more" being used more and more nowadays?
Leisure is the mother of invention.
Why walk when you can take a car? Why take a car when you can fly? Why go anywhere at all if you can just send an email or call? Why reinvent the wheel when you can just read about it? All these things save a person time, time which they are free to use towards other ends, towards their own happiness, towards their own prupose.
One definition of decadence is: "A process, condition, or period of deterioration or decline, as in morals or art; decay." What the author really seems to be writing about is moral decadence, and the effect that it has on the devlopment of technology. But decadence is not defined by wanting to do less work. It is our very ability to live beyond mere daily survival that defines our humanity. Our ingenuity is defined by our ability to accomplish more in less time, giving us more time to conteplation and reason, for our own purpose.
The fact that some fall victim to idleness should not be an argument against the nature of invention. The fact that not everything that you can buy is particularly useful does not mean it won't be useful to some. People will decide what they want, what they can afford. I would even argue that example given of the keyless entry system of this new audi is an example of the good innovation can bring to people's lives... Unless it is faulty for some reason, this system would save people time which is what is important. Time is essentially all we have.
I remember wasting hours waiting to get into a car that I had been locked out of. A few hours that this keyless biometric entry system would have saved. Yes, just a few very wealthy people will benefit now, but so too were many inventions of profound importance limited to a wealthy few to start. The automobile and telephone come to mind as blatant examples of this.
Technology has the potential to make people's lives easier, but to make their pursuit of happiness more possible is not decadent. A Decadent morality is one that expects others to do things for you without compensation.
The author talks about "basic needs" and "brainpower" as do many of a socialist persuassion. But what does he mean, what does he want? Socialists want people to work on things that they wants them to do, not because they will compensate them for their work, but because they wish to dictate a corrupt form of materialism on others. Yes, you heard me. The author is the one being materialistic, just not on an individual level. Remember, he is the one talking about basic needs in material terms. Basic needs which can be met with technological solutions... But what are these basic needs that the human mind has not long ago met? Do somehow plants grow differently than before or animals not procreate? Has the sun stopped shinning? The basic needs of every man woman and child on earth can easily be met with existing technology. People can shape their environment like never before in history. The tinkerers job has been done. The "brainpower" of which he speaks has already invented more than enough technology to meet people's "basic needs" of food, water and shelter.
The poor people of the world suffer not from lack of existence of the technolgy that could help them, but rather they have not the means to acquire it. What is needed here is a little charity and an end to corruption which saps the limited resources of these people. And now we are full circle... what is a source of this corruption? This corruption is not substantially different from the corruption that says that I must work towards your goals without compensation. That you are the mind and I the body. I the slave and you the master. As if the reason and invention will survive such an arrangement.
When the author writes about basic needs of others, he is writing down a path not towards charity, but towards a world that stagnates and mires itself in its most base needs not its basic ones.
Truely novel and useful innovation is not dictated by the need of others.
The Automobile, when it was invented was a novelty at best. see its history laid out here: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsst eama.htm
It was difficult to get it onto the muddy( read dirt ) roads of the day. At best you would consider such things a diversionary hobby and certainly not practical for real travel. ... until Ford. Enough said about that article i guess. On the others hand there has been more then a few negative effects of cars along with the good ones. Maybe we should all simplify our lives and become Amish?
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Because they are both such compelling human interest stories, even when they are merely chewing. Haven't you ever noticed that?
I had a great idea for a little robot that audibly farts perfume. It has a volume control that controls pressure on a perfume bladder. It walks around looking for odors and when it finds them, it emits a perfumed fart. If it smells a sick person, it calls the doctor. If it detects smoke, it farts like a siren and then walks to the nearest smart brick to place an emergency call. Now, my phone is just ringing off the hook.
What were we talking about?
Human ingenuity and technological innovation allow us to accomplish increasingly more with fewer raw materials. The wealth of a society is not solely dependent on the natural resources it possesses; compare the US to the former USSR, or for that matter virtually any capitalist country to any socialist country.
We must realize that endless growth is not only not desirable, but not even possible.
We're a long way from running out of resources. And there's lots of room in space.
You're perfectly free to go off and commune with nature and abandon decadent products like indoor plumbing and antibiotics. That doesn't make you morally superior to those of us who appreciate how modern technology improves our lives.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
1. It is stronger or more damage resistant than a human and able to perform tasks impractical for a human.
2. It is more patient than a human and able to wait until the right moment to perform a simple task
3. It does not mind repeating a task a number of times that would be mind-numbing for a human.
4. It is faster and more consistent at a task than a human.
Otherwise, it's a toy.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
It is becoming more and more difficult to produce a new techology in your garage without serious funding.
Yeah...that's probably what overly content engineers said about the time the first Apple computer was being invented.
The people who are too comfortable to risk trying are the first to say it is too hard. The majority of new businesses fail. The few that survive do so because the owner (a) probably failed multiple times before and finally figured the whole 'running a business for profit not personal amusement' thing out, and (b) they stuffed their whole life and identity into it.
I'm personally content to sit here making a nice salary and achieve way below my potential to create astounding things.
My two -- soon to be three...and then four...and then five -- kids are _very_ appreciative of it. You need to decide for yourself what is most important. Do you want to be passingly remembered by mobs of unwashed masses who buy your product and think its cool for a year or two before chucking it (ala Rubik's Cube or even the Apple computer)? Or do you want to invest your genius into raising great human beings. I've chosen the latter and will never regret it.
"Have you noticed that more and more technology is more ingenious than useful?"
You mean like Slashdot?
I plan on starting a harem myself... do you have any tips?
Laws are for people with no friends.
When can we forget this car fad?
There are 8,000 cars in the this country. (Which accounted for 96 auto-related deaths!) Horses are not only much more efficient and clean, but are also MUCH safer.
It's obvious they're just rich toys that will never catch on for most people. Would you pay 1 or 2 years wages for some machine that can't even pull 250lbs? Really!! These machines haven't made anyone's life any better. 25 miles to a gallon of gasoline? My horse can do that at a quarter the cost, and doesn't put those foul black gasses into the air.
And then these people, speeding around on the 10 miles of these new, expensive, "toy" paved roads.
Even 10 miles of pavement is too much in our glorious 48-state Republic. Paved roads are dangerous! They encourage high rates of speed in these confounded contraptions!! Fortunately, 15 states now have 20mph speed limits. Still too fast, if you ask me.
And these other fads! Just as useless. Teddy bears. Flying machines. Nickelodeon machines. Victrola machines. Machines! Machines!! Machines!!! All these useless "entertaining" contraptions!! Technology for technology's sake!! What in the name of Heaven and Earth are they good for?!?
We live in an enlightened age. We have an 11% literacy rate! And $13 a week for a mere 59 hours of work per week is plenty!
Enough useless toys!! We need to hunker down, combat bimetallism to retain the gold standard, and return to an agrarian society! I'm convinced that all this so-called progress has only resulted in unhappy people being subjected to the morally bankrupt cities. Being forced to work jobs they don't like in squalor.
You watch. If this so-called "progress" continues, we'll have women voters, lose the protectorate in Cuba, and have a slothful and degenerate society! What's next, pre-cooked foodstuffs?!?
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Come on -- the whole neo-Luddite "cars destroy our environment" bullcrap is just that, bullcrap, like the rest of the story. Lest we forget, the automobile was supposed to eliminate the troubles large cities had with pollution in their days. What pollution you say? HORSE CRAP. HORSE PISS. TONS OF IT. ALL OVER THE STREETS. Anyone who bitches about cars and how polluting they are, I invite you to go visit a horse farm somedays and step around to the barn right before they muck it out. Now remember that the STREETS of New York used to look like that. Faustian bargain? Please.
This gadget glut is mearly marketing. "Why just get a cell phone when you can have a cell phone that can take pictures!" Just call me captain obvious. I don't see a good use for a cell phone that can take pictures and my old cell phone is just fine. Problem solved! Happy with my old cell I don't buy that cell phone that looks and sounds like a slot machine and I don't waste my time, money, or brain cycles. I'm all for rejecting useless, annoying products. If you want a cell phone that plays "pop goes the weasle", by all mean, enjoy yourself. I don't care. Conversely, if there is a robot that removes brain tumors, please build them. Please build things that benefits humanity. Microprocessors allow us to program machines to do what we want them to do. We can program useful and/or useless actions into them. You choose what products you buy. And if you code, you choose what the machine will do. Technology we need: Environmentally friendly transportation. High polluting vehicles are destructive. Maybe I'm lazy for driving a car. Maybe I should ride a bike. (which I do and should do more of.) I would perfer technology that saves lives and feeds people. Maybe the third world needs a freezer that can run on very little power instead of an internet enabled freezer that sucks electricity. Environmentally friendly energy production. That should keep us busy for a while.....
Sorry kid. You are a coward.
Get a username and then come back and play.
There are unhappy times at EVERY job. But they are jobs. You have a responsibility. I write real time human-grade code. I love my job, but that doesn't mean that I come home after a hard day, completely bushed, and say "I need to better my life."
Oh wait, I do. Infact, I got a Masters in 3 years of night school, and I'm working out again. So I'm bettering my life.
But I'm also playing tekken. So step the fuck off, son.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
There IS a reason we're building all these gadgets. It's because these are but baby steps towards the REAL goal, the final (well, *a* final) result of all this work.
Sexbots.
Robots for use in intimate human pleasure. For a good percentage of the planet, we've met the needs for food and shelter (government-caused distribution problems aside). What other basic human need is not being met? Sex.
It's what we all want -- it's as hardwired into us as a D-flip flop is on a CPU. But right now we have to either negotiate for it with other fickle and insanely over-choosy humans, or use ultimately unsatisfactory substitutes like porn. As the porn industry shows, there's money to be made here.
And the people inventing these seemingly purposeless gadgets are the very ones who (on average) aren't getting cooperation from their fellow humans on getting their intimate needs met. All of these things are small steps towards making a semi-autonomous robot that has vast functionality yet has everything so well-packed that it can be housed in an appropriate humaniod package.
That's what the human race is groping (puns always intended) ever so slowly towards. To expunge the last reason we need interact with other humans at all.
"Hell is other people." We're reaching for heaven.
> Have you noticed that more and more technology
> is more ingenious than useful?
No.
> Our response to being bored and rich is not to
> discard our possessions and live more simply,
> but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in
> which we might contemplate our shame.
If Mr. Jeffries finds this behavior shameful, why doesn't he stop engaging in it? If he isn't doing it, why does he say "we"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Whoever read that article needs the new high speed Easy-Flo-Z Stick-Wedged-Up-Ass remover. Lighten up for God's sake! Having a web browser in your phone, or a superlight stereo or a robot that mows the lawn is fun. Didn't they get the hint? One of the items under discussion was in fact an X-box after all. Not everything we humans do has to be noble. Some of us like to have fun. Hell, even cats and dogs like to have fun too. There's nothing weird or shameful about it. And for some of us having fun with gadgets is only one aspect of our lives.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
It's called Autozen http://www.linuxlabs.com/software/AutoZen.html
When penicillin was first invented it didn't have a use. I may also note that neither did comptuers as we think of them today. The first ones that we could start compairing to what we use now were pretty much only useful for controlling electric train models.
Well back a few decades ago the head commisoner of US patenets said that everything has been invented. He of course was wrong like Bill Gates infamous quote. It's not so much that no great inventions are coming out more like improvements and diffrent versions of older inventions. Like a patch file for your game. The article talks about the whole Audi having way to much useless technology, but the fact the chair adjusts to your settings is just an improvement on the sliding chairs, it's like a hands-free version. I don't know it sounds to me like the author can't handle the technology.
Your post is almost Buddhist.
The primary difference here is that there really is value in life... it just can't come from material objects.
Our mind is a sense organ like the ears, eyes, nose, skin and tongue. Emotions are messages about the surrounding environment in the same respect as sound, sight, smell, touch and taste.
The problem is conditioning. We value emotion for the emotion itself instead of the message it delivers. Pleasure is pursued for its own sake and cannot be captured in any meaningful sense by attaching pleasure meanings to material objects. In the same respect, pain is avoided for its own sake but will never be evaded by attaching meanings to external objects.
I thought the author was bold in his criticisms. He knew full well what kind of response he would get. It's unfortunate that only the Guardian would run this because it's not associated with widespread respect.
Anyway, I could go on forever about this topic but this is Slashdot and such thoughts are doomed to be lost in the current here.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Technology is OK except when the fascist corporations like to use it against us ... such as with digital rights management. That is sufficient for me to change my relationship with technology.
In a strict sense, you are correct...the Earth is of finite size, there is an upper limit on farmable land (theoretically, it's the entire land area, but in practice it's a fair bit less ATM), etc. What the OP is challenging is the notion of the zero-sum game--the notion that for me to be well off, somebody else must be in the poorhouse. It discounts the idea that we might use what we know to make things better for everybody. To paraphrase a talk-show host who shall remain nameless, a fair number of the problems the world faces are not the result of an unequal distribution of wealth, but are the result of an unequal distribution of capitalism.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
You have contradicted yourself. Either "there is no lasting value in life" or "the only lasting value in life is the joy we derive from life". Take your pick, but you can only pick one.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes. (Thank you, Walt Whitman.)
There is no lasting value in a single life. We die. Any value we intrinsically had dies with us.
But, we interact with others in life. In that, we contribute a lasting value, that dies only when our influence dies. The more joy we take from life, and the more joy we give in life, the better our influence.
At least, in my view.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Well, you could start by vacuuming the house...
You condtradicted yourself twice.
Wonderful! I love contradictions.
You yourself have assumed that there is some duty in life, namely to increase joy in others. At least you were correct about it being the worst kind of self-important drivel.
Yes, I do believe there is a duty to increase joy in others. My duty is mine own, one which I have willingly undertaken. In my original message, I did not make it clear that it is my own; in fact, I *did* say it was "our" duty.
And I am self-important. I am pretty damned important to myself, and a handful of others.
Thanks for noticing!
There is no duty in life. None. Any duties you feel, any debts you take on, are you own choices. No one else need be bound by them, except by their own choice.
But these and other silly word games help fill up the time between now and when we die.
Amen, Brotha.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"Our response to being bored and rich is not to discard our possessions and live more simply, but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in which we might contemplate our shame."
ok, not this guy. Im not going to 'toot-my-own-horn' here, but this is *not* true of everyone. I agree that the NorthAmerica is quickly headed this way, but some of us are actively screaming out in the darkness and trying to convince others to wake up a little.
Brash consumerism, brand fetishism, ecological devistation, work-a-holism are all a product/cause of our the $wealth$ in NA.
So, while I am most certainly not a neo-luddite, I put alot of decisions to the "do I *need* that test?". "What is the environmental/social impact of that purchase?" I read labels. I live in "the city", but buy Local Food, from Local Farmers (novel eh?). I wont paint anything outdoors. I reclaimed all the wood from my demolition to serve anew in my home renovation. I volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. I am the President of my Local Green Party Riding Association. I run the neighbourhood composter in my back-yard. I only plant indigenous plants in my yard. I use the library instead of buying my own copies of books. I live in a 100year old townhouse "downtown". I ride my bike to work, and walk to the corner-store, and ride with Critical Mass to eductate traffic.
So, do I think Im better than other people? No, but I do think that other people are mindlessly, and aimlessly being directed by outside influences, driving them to be irresponsible, vapid and destructive to their communities and the planet.
Bottom Line: Simple choices can help dig North America out of its destructive funk - do something to help out please. As a side note, living this way is MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE. I want to RETIRE AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE instead of making bankers rich, work 60hrs a week and let strangers raise my children.
His larger point about the failures of materialism is all well and good, but the notion that we are somehow producing more useless/frivolous inventions & products now than in the past strikes me as bullshit.
Comb through the stacks of patents. Look through old magazines.
Judging the modern age by comparing today's laughable products to yesterday's enduring successes is a biased undertaking.
Here is where his argument falls down. What is the down side of personalization? AFAIK, there is none. Sure it's ingenious -- it's also tremendously useful.
Alvin Toffler pointed out in Future Shock (1970) that computer-aided personalization would eventually become ubiquitous. He was right. People *want* things that are customized to their personal preferences and, er, sizes.
Here are some ways computers have aided personalization: Firefly (Patti Maes, MIT). Bayesian spam filters (many personal computers). Levi's pants (Levis.com). Design your own car (any automaker's site). Customizable news feeds. Even Slashdot itself. ( You ... probably would be more interested in the Preferences links you see up top there, where you can customize Slashdot...)
I also agree with the posters who pointed out that some innovations have applications undreamed of by their inventors. The Mayans discovered the wheel -- they used in their childrens' toys, and *nowhere else*.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Reminds me of a robot story I once read where an inventor got drunk and invented a robot, the reason for which he could not remember, now being sobor. The story continues and he keeps finding things out about his robot, actions he can perform, and yet he cannot remember the purpose behind the robot.
It's been a long time since i read it, high-school, I think, but I would like to remember the author or the story better.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
I wish you had a link for that. Seems like there's a deeper truth to that.
I want a wind-up mp3 player!!! Apple, are you listening?
This is only partly off-topic ;)
:)
I (conditionally) disagree with the claim of the quoted blurb, that "Our response to being bored and rich is not to discard our possessions and live more simply, but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in which we might contemplate our shame."
Actually, one particularly nice thing about technology, especially the "high" and semi-high kinds, is the way space can be reclaimed. Sitting at my elbow are not one, but two computers of the general size and shape that people describe as a cube, even though they're far from cubical. Together, they take up less room than the case of my previous main computer, and use less energy. If my job didnt' involve being online so much, I'd try to pare it down to one machine at my elbow.
Does your kitchen have a microwave raised off the counter? That's space that (just a few years ago) you'd have had to sacrifice if you wanted the convenience of a microwave.
Two minor examples, but you can think of many more around the typical 1st-world dwelling: it doesn't *have* to, since you can be as Rube Goldberg as you'd like, but technology can be a force for genuine simplification and comfort. Which is pretty obvious
There's a reason besides one-upmanship that many people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for flat-screen plasma TV monitors, and in a sense it's the same reason that others forgo television entirely -- because a thin rectangle on the wall is less intrusive than a many-hundreds-of-pounds behemoth looking like a shrine, taking up half the living room.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I agree with you to a point. The author seems to have a myopic view of some of these "inventions". It is no less true today that over 90% of the newly patented inventions that get marketed and sold are not groundbreaking or even that useful. There was a time when people didn't think much about the telephone (who wanted to hear a singing trio in another room?) the phonograph (no way to reproduce phonograph until the 20th century) and the hot-air balloon ("What good is a newborn baby?" - Franklin to someone saying "what good is that?!?") but what would we do without telephones, airflight, and CDs?
I didn't mean to imply that all inventions were useful. :)
This type of thing is typically said by people who are bored and poor (and trying to say something profound.) The amount of useful technology that has appeared in the past 20 years is a multiple of the useful technology that appeared in the previous 80.
Piss up a rope. Hagar...
I've got it! What we do is start this thing called a "Fight Club", then we get enough guys involved in it so we can...
Happy people make bad consumers.
Jeffries apparently didn't see fit to include any references to recent developments in engineering/technology that will benefit mankind
No slashdot readers did either.
As one example, in the last several days, a tidal energy turbine, apparently the first in the world, was turned on, and is generating electricity.
Now, while many consumers may have an interest in gadgets, unfortunately this may be the totality of "advanced technology" with which they knowingly come into contact on a regular basis. Most normal folks will never see a windmill farm ( at least for a couple of years ), or a tidal energy turbine farm, or the inside of a particle accelerators, or blast off to spend time on the International Space Station.
Most of the important new "gadgets" are simply too big and too expensive for regular folks to enjoy. And many people, unfortunately, really don't care about new technology unless it provides direct and tangible benefits to them. While tidal energy turbine farms may eventually be widespread, providing power for many coastal metropoli, you can't really impress your friends with it, and, most importantly, since you cannot have a tidal energy turbine of your very own, you can't impress women with one either.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
Now someone needs to write an electric monk that will believe things for you. I suppose the alpha version would believe that everything was pink. And on the topic of further automation, there is also Progress Quest, a RPG that plays for you.
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all....
--Thomas J. Kopp
Please READ the article instead of guessing at what he's saying and flaming it. He is NOT saying:
- Capitalism is bad because it gives people what they want.
- Today's robots/PCs are not good enough; we need better technology.
- If I can't see the use of something, it's useless.
His essay is not a structural criticism of technology or economy but rather of society's values. I don't think he would criticise the inter/ARPAnet as a technology, but he is criticizing the use of technology for the purpose of building electric eyebrow tweezers, ultrasonic dog polishers and internet-enabled toasters -- as ends in themselves. Yes, we can build them, we can buy them; that's not the point. He's not questioning the purpose of the inventions, he's expressing dismay at the trivility of the answers. If you're satisfied with them, fine.
Here, have a baby's arm holding an apple.
Those labor saving devices had a huge impact. Back then, housekeeping was a full time job (generally for the wife). Now, women aren't stuck with that sort of drudgery. Getting rid of the several hours a day we each (those of us who can't afford domestic servants) have to devote to drudge-work will have a major impact too.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
Hmm, so if you can walk 3 miles and hour and carry 4 people and their luggage about 600 miles a day, it might be worth it to get rid of the car.
the current here is the here most immediate.
the current fear is the fear most hated.
the current year is the year most remembered.
the current near is the near most fated.
two contradictions, angles twisted by ninety.
three predelictions, phase misted a plenty.
multiple demandings, answers forthcoming.
infinite understandings, monks slashdot-slumming.
"just" is rudest, a factor to fudge.
"almost" buddhist but who is to judge?
i asked buddha one day, hey dude, so what gives?
if all is impermanent, then who cares how one lives?
he scanned my source briefly, winked, and then smiled.
"please terminate comments or your code won't compile."
I have spent about 7 years as a 100% (business-wise) independent inventor. It was always a loop. I would think of dozens of novel practical gizmos I could make, weed them out on ordinary criteria (utility, psychology/social-prejudice-oriented marketability, cost/benefit, yadda yadda), more fully explore manufacturing costs per strategy, "intra-invention", and so on. For some gizmos, I would start building a prototype and find that I didn't have immediate cash to finish. Meanwhile, the "work stoppage" would tempt me to use my time on the next weeding out process as described immediately above. If that's the case, how could I expect to fund the propriety? Intellectual property is a matter wherein a thief shows up and steals whereupon you hire a private cop (patent attorney or whatever) at high cost and get a reasonably good chance to get some of the loot recovered. In practical reality I gave up (maybe). In several weeks I will go back to school, and I won't stop until I am a lawyer.
Figures, huh?
Anyway, I suppose my industrial/developmental ambitions will take place on the side with inventor-styled paranoia and 100% self-funding, but lawyering might make me too busy or--perish the thought--too happy to bother. I learned long ago on /. that I cannot dare think myself weird (i.e., unique)! That's why I post this here and now. Surely I'm not the only one.
Connections, The Day the Universe Changed, Pinball Effect...
The books are better than the video series.
A true nihilist would say "fuck everybody else" rather than "our only real duty in life is to increase the amount of joy experienced by others." To me, this doesn't sound nihilist at all.
... that's why I manually masterbate caged animals for artificial insemination.
Old Lady #1: When my ex-husband passed away, the insurance company said his policy didn't cover him.
Old Lady #2: They didn't have enough money for the funeral.
Old Lady #3: It's so hard nowadays, with all the gangs and rap music..
Old Lady #1: What about the robots?
Old Lady #4: Oh, they're everywhere!
Old Lady #1: I don't even know why the scientists make them.
Old Lady #2: Darren and I have a policy with Old Glory Insurance, in case we're attacked by robots.
Old Lady #1: An insurance policy with a robot plan? Certainly, I'm too old.
Old Lady #2: Old Glory covers anyone over the age of 50 against robot attack, regardless of current health.
[ cut to Sam Waterston, Compensated Endorser ]
Sam Waterson: I'm Sam Waterston, of the popular TV series "Law & Order". As a senior citizen, you're probably aware of the threat robots pose. Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel. Well, now there's a company that offers coverage against the unfortunate event of robot attack, with Old Glory Insurance. Old Glory will cover you with no health check-up or age consideration.
[ SUPER: Limitied Benefits First Two Years ]
You need to feel safe. And that's harder and harder to do nowadays, because robots may strike at any time.
[ show pie chart reading "Cause of Death in Persons Over 50 Years of Age": Heart Disease, 42% - Robots, 58% ]
And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free.. because they're made of metal, and robots are strong. Now, for only $4 a month, you can achieve peace of mind in a world full of grime and robots, with Old Glory Insurance. So, don't cower under your afghan any longer. Make a choice.
[ SUPER: "WARNING: Persons denying the existence of Robots may be Robots themselves. ]
Old Glory Insurance. For when the metal ones decide to come for you - and they will.
My Freakin Blog
I set up my own soapbox so I don't have to compete with 400 other posts. Because I'm conceited like that. But if you're interested do take a look.
blah blah blah
In theory, perhaps to some degree. That doesn't change the fact there there is an upper limit, or that in practice we're just burning through resources faster and faster without doing much to improve our quality of life.
In the past few years we've seen significant problems with resources including fresh water, oil, biodiversity, topsoil and arable land, and landfill space.
Since there's still no practical way to get significant numbers of people there or exploit resources in space, that's about as helpful as having lots of room in Farieland.
Oh, please. Could you fall any deeper into the fallacy of the excluded middle?
I never clamied "moral superiority". And I appreciate technology that improves our lives. But I also critize technology when it's used to annoying or destructive ends, or when the cost outweighs the benefits.
I like technology as much as anyone. But technology without wisdom is like power tools and explosives in the hands of small children.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Your premis is wrong. You claim that timesavings devices cannot save time, because we do not have lots of time. You are wrong. Timesavings devices save time, leaving more time for tasks that you would prefer to do. Right now I am getting hungry, I could go to the river and catch supper, and cook it up. Once in a while I do that, but today I have decided that reading and posting on /. is a better use of my time. (And because I often make this choice I have food in my fridge, but I could also make the choice to go to a resteraunt)
What people forget when making your arguement is that people cannot sit around doing nothing for long. Try it, take a week off work and resolve to do nothing you can avoid. lie in bed all day long, except for bathroom breaks, and to answer the doorbell when pizza arives. You are also allowed to go to a fast food drive through for your meals, but be sure to use the drive thru. (if you need gas go full service) I'll bet that none of you make it. A few of you will make it if you have books, video games, TV or drugs. Not many even then. You need something to do with your time, but with robots you can choose what you do.
No need for wind up in civilized countries.
Every time someone tries to make a better robot, like "ReplayTV" with automagic commercial skip, a large dinosaur comes along with a pack of lawyers and sues them out of business.
The problem is not the lack of trying to make new technology. The problem is that there are established business entities that have a vested interest in keeping everything status quo. If you put in mass-transportation, auto sales will suffer. If you create alternative fuel vehicles that get incredible gas mileage the energy industry suffers. If you create a portable music device that can hold 300 CD's which can be easily traded off to your friends the Music Distributors suffer. If we build roads that last 20 years the construction industry suffers and so on and so on.
Until we can somehow do what is collectively good for our society (and the world) every large established entity will fight to keep control of it's turf. However, everyone has a different vision of what is "good for the world." Here are some things I would personally like to see which are very do-able and at least good for me...
1. Smart Traffic Lights that keeps traffic moving and fuel economy up.
2. A radio that can learn my musical tastes and automatically skip around during commercials and only pick up content I like (or it thinks I'll like).
3. Cars that drive themselves. I just want to hop in and say "work" and drink my coffee and read the paper until I arrive.
4. A computer that behaves like an appliance instead of a tempermental piece of Blue Screen of Deathing CRAP! What am I still waiting for stuff to boot? Where is the instant on button?
5. A standard for HDTV so we can finally get on with better content.
6. Food replicators.
7. Tractor Beams.
8. Shields.
9. Lightsabers.
10. A home fusion reactor for all my power needs.
11. ONE PASSWORD for all my applications and applications with a central secure authentication mechanism.
12. Affordable digital cameras without shutter-lag.
I don't ask for much........
Very good points.
But, I did not say "pleasure," or even "happiness." I did say "joy." Don't know what difference that makes.
But, in my non-nihilistic non-hedonism, since life is merely the process of moving from birth to death, the process by which you find joy is as important as the joy itself.
Or, put another way: I may receive a house as a gift, but I will take more pride (and perhaps more joy) from a house I build myself.
So, although the mind-state induced by soma may equal the mind-state of joy, the context is different, and so the experience will be different.
You just got fired? Your wife is dying? You have an incurable melanoma? No problem! Your life is one long, drawn-out orgasm anyway!
Again, a matter of context. Although an orgasm from masturbation may be just as intense as any other time, I would rather have sex with a partner than masturbate.
And context plays out with the getting fired or losing a wife. The joy experienced after a great time of depression or anger never makes up for the loss, but feels extremely good just the same.
But, you do have excellent points, ones that are extremely difficult (if not impossible) to refute.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Two words: Janitor's mop
that works great on the kids, but lousy on the carpet...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
> Um....if you live in hurricane/tornado/blizzard prone
> areas your view on that "wind-up radio" might change.
Dude, you heard of batteries?
Pardonne
Actually, life without toys and TV is quite fun. I don't think the tendency to accumulating toys has to last for ever - perhaps it's just a phase?
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
The supposition of the article entirely ignores the history of innovation.
It assumes that design for a wealthy elite's amusement or comfort is a waste of time. However, many inventions that don't have a military pedigree begin life as a novelty or plaything of the privileged.
Just because the uses of some new technology today seem trivial doesn't mean they wont be extremely useful in the future. Let the early adopters pay for the R & D with their toys. Encourage them to do it! Ultimately their folly might do everyone some good.
Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have LOTS OF TIME. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard.
I call this mindset a 'vacation syndrome', because such great insigths often visit people when they are at holidays. Sure, it feels like you get plenty of time for Nature, meditation, entartainment when you are off hiking or spending two weeks at Bahamas.
But try living away from civilization for any cosniderable period (grow crops, hack wood, darn - look after baby without dispensable diapers), and suddenly flush toilet, microwave oven and supermarkets start to make sense again.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
One of the sadest things to me is that corporations will finance projects they believe will have the best return on investment.
Umm, you DO know why corporations exist, don't you? If you've ever had even a basic economics course you should know that corporations exist for one purpose and one purose only, to make money! This is neither good nor evil, it is how things are and is the basis for capitalism. A corporation which does not pursue this goal does not remain in existance very long. It is usually left to non-profits, individuals, humanitatirans, etc. to pursue selfless non-monetary goals of helping mankind. Of course, overall the system works pretty well since people are usually willing to pay for something which will make their lives better, so corporations DO have motivation to help solve societies problems.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Vincent
---- The one good thing about music: When it hits you, you feel no pain.
All you need is a TV, a lazyboy, a fridge full of beer and a toilet.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It is usually left to non-profits, individuals, humanitatirans, etc. to pursue selfless non-monetary goals of helping mankind. Yes it is, and that is where the problem lies. I am well aware of why we think companies exist, and I am suggesting that to be one of many problems. It's not inconceivable for a corporation to use it's vast resources to do more than just make a profit. Take a look at the philosophy held by the founders of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. They did many things within their own community to help strengthen society, particularly becuase of their own distaste for this common philosophy that businesses exist for the sole purpose of making money. I'm not saying a corporation is good or evil in this matter. There's nothing wrong with making a profit. I'm just saying it'd be great if corporations looked to do more with their resources. It'd be great, but that's not how it is, and that's exactly my point. A corporation will only exist if it generates revenue to support it, but that doesn't have to be the only purpose for its existence.
George Carlin copyrighted at least a big chunk of Jeffries' rant, what... almost twenty years ago, with his "Place to keep my stuff" routine. George's take was a heckuva lot funnier, too. :-)
Watch it here(10.7mb quicktime)
When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. --Anatole France
I am well aware of why we think companies exist,
We don't think corporations exist to make a profit, they do. This was made very clear in my freshman Economics course. This does not mean that making a profit is ALL corporations can do or their sole reason for existing, but it is the basis for their existance.
It's not inconceivable for a corporation to use it's vast resources to do more than just make a profit.
And many do. Many large corporations donate to charity, give University grants, college scholarships, etc. However, if the corporation is not profitable then none of this is possible. Yes, it's nice when corporations do things like this, but I don't think we have a right to tell corporations what they should be doing with their money anymore than we have a right to tell individuals. It would be nice if everyone gave to charity, but if they don't want to spend their hard earned money that way that's their right.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Again, this isn't about right or wrong. It's about something I've seen that I don't like. It's an observation, a trend that I don't like. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I just don't like it. Some people like squash, I don't. Are they wrong for liking squash, no. Some corporations consider return on investment before everything, I'd like it if that weren't the case. Call me an idealist, a dreamer, whatever. I was simply pointing out something that I see that I don't like and if I had the opportunity to run a corporation I hope I'd run it differently.
Again, you mention freshman economics courses. I've had the economics course and a few other economics courses. All they've shown me is that a company needs a profit to exist, not that they exist to make a profit. Profit can be a means to an end, not just an end. And as you've stated, many corporations have shown that. I'm not going to argue with you on what your economics classes taught you, but that's not what they taught me.
Why do you keep saying stuff like but if they don't want to spend their hard earned money that way that's their right. I completely agree. I didn't say it wasn't their right. I know what their rights are here, I'm not trying to take them away. I just don't like the idea of putting return on investment before everything. I like to see people (and corporations) give simply for the sake of giving. That's just my opinion, an observation. I'm not being judgemental, just stating how I see things differently. If it appears that I am being judgemental then that is a miscommunication due to the sometimes fraudulent portrayal of emotion by typed text.