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Is "Good Enough" the Future of Technology?
himitsu writes "In an article titled 'The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine,' Wired claims that the future of technology, warfare and medicine will be filled with 'good enough' solutions; situations where feature-rich and expensive products are replaced with bare-bones infrastructures and solutions. 'We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high-quality."'"
Look at a large amount of government systems. Everything is to the cheapest bidder. But the cheapest bidder isn't always the best or product, and contains issues. Also known as 'good enough.'
Simplicity is the key... just like my post.
I myself use maybe 10%. There are parts (of Windows Vista) that I have never explored and will never explore. I just do not need all that functionality.
I bet that the majority of non-technical users are just like me. Suppose that Microsoft created a "good enough" operating system called "Windows Minimum" (WM). It has 10% of the functions of Windows Vista and 10% of its size. WM would also likely be 10 times more reliable since it is small and easy to verify to be correct. Best of it, WM would likely be 10% of the price of Windows Vista. $20 is just about right for most people.
This article is really just one guy pointificating about a few anecdotes. Of course he's right that the mass market is in the middle to low end. But what was it not so? Ford outsells Ferrari. This is not news.
My line of work - which is patent law, crucify me - brings me in contact with a lot of mechanical engineers. One complaint I often get to hear from the older ones is that in ye olden days, most people in management were engineers themselves, who had worked up their way through a lifelong career. Those were the days of quality products, of taking pride in the excellence of your work. Now, as MBAs have taken over, we have the days of producing as cheap and sloppy as you can get away with. This may be partially nostalgia-filtered, but I guess it has some reality to it.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Contrary to popular believe its always been the case that tools and machines were made just good enough.
The definition of "just good enough" depends almost entirely on the cost to manufacturer any given device.
When a given tool is manufactured, its engineered to withstand its expected life span, within the budget available.
If you know you can buy a plow that will last for 20 years for X dollars, and a longer lasting plow for a lot more money, you immediately start thinking about how much cheaper it will be to build the same plow in 5 years, after the new mine is open, and the new forge set up. If its going to be cheaper, you don't bother beefing it up.
Things in the past were built to last their expected life time (or the life of the owner), or the duration for which the device is needed.
Per unit Cost, and per unit lead time to manufacture just about anything has shortened progressively over the centuries.
We don't need the plow, the ship, or the building to last that long any more, and in fact it is detrimental that they do, because that delays progress of new technology. Its easier to recycle it and build next year's model, which will be cheaper.
I don't see anything new here. Its been this way since dirt.
Even my long dead grandfather used to complain "They don't make em like the used to".
Thanks for that.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If this post is not good enough now...It will be tomorrow.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
People are confusing "quality" with "features".
The quality product isn't the one with the most features, it's the one that
meets the actual requirements, does so reliably and doesn't fall apart. This
means that a Toyota or even a Hyundai is a quality product despite not having
the frills of a Benz or the hype of a BMW.
When the frills get in the way of getting things done, the more basic device
is actually the more suitable one and represents "higher quality".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As someone who has been in the computer industry for a long time, I can tell you that there are sweet spots everywhere. Would you pay $100 for a good video card, capable of 80% of the power of a $200 one? Or would you pay $400 for one with 110% of the power of a $200 one?
'Good Enough' is how technology has always been. Sure, we could make our jet fighters 10% more fuel efficient, if we added 50% to the cost of the engines, and a similar amount to the upkeep. We COULD do a lot of things, but one or two steps down from the best is still good enough for most applications in the real world.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Um, it probably would cost about the same as XP/Vista/7, assuming most end-users would get this 'WinMin' OS instead of WinXP/Vista/7, as the market has shown that people are willing to pay that much for the OS, even if they don't use all the features of it.
And somehow I doubt Microsoft would devote all that extra money into making the OS more secure/reliable/easy to use. They probably would blow it trying to diversify into some other markets, such as a licensable OS for routers (so Cisco can make the hardware, and MS would provide the software!).
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Wired are actually telling us that we LIKE high quality stuff, but after a point, consumer products are just repetitive. It's pornographic to the T - they're exploiting consumers by pushing for higher and higher quality while the essential creation remains the same.
So we're starting to get a sense for what industrialism brought us: The need to put a harness on creativity, to attempt to "own" creativity. And it can't be done.
My own theory is that we've tried unsuccessfully to sustain ourselves on consumerism, and the people who are doing the real creative stuff now are no longer what would be termed "consumers." They have withdrawn from the marketplace. So industry and media need to put a spin on this fast - they need to siphon off what's left in the can before they start to die. They're just in a mad grab for gobs of raw ideas, knowing that they can't hold onto individual ideas for so long anymore.
I drive a Toyota Matrix. It's no Lexus, but's it's plenty "good enough".
I live in a two-story, 2,000 Sq Ft home. It's no mansion, but it's quite nice, and it's "good enough".
My computer is an almost-3-year-old Dell running Fedora Core Linux. Although it was a bit spendy when I bought it, it's worth 1/10 of it's original value. I still use it because it's "good enough".
My shoes, purchased at Payless shoe source, black leather Airwalks. Are they the nicest shoes in the world? Well, they are if by nicest you mean "easy to come by for $30 or less". Oh, and "good enough".
Lame article is lame. We *always* compromise quality for price to find a healthy balance between the two. You don't drive a bulletproof limousine, nor do you (likely) travel to work every day in a private jet. Given a particular product marketplace, as features broaden, they become less and less important. The marketplace for the product as a whole commoditizes, and prices collapse.
This is the natural order of market progression, and is the march towards general social wealth. The author of this article needs a little Econ 101, as does the article submitter.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It's good for the economy to produce stuff that people have to replace regularly. We should produce crap that breaks every few months. That would really boost consumerism and spin up the economy. But what we really need are cheap and simple replacement societies. When a world police like the US bombs another country and takes their resources, they can just slap in a modern, cheap and simple solution. Benefit for all.
Yeah. It's not as if Richard Gabriel's "The Rise of Worse is Better" was written yesterday.
Then again, magazines like Wired live by 'discovering' things that are long known and then gushing about it to a public that doesn't know about it, to make it appear as if they are on the bleeding edge and, you know, totally radical.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
This isn't really new, it's just the 95% rule (where admittedly 95% is just a WAG) and I've considered it a rule of thumb for decades
Basically anything that's 95% good enough and has some other overwhelming advantage (cheapness, convenience, lack of confusion) wins over technically more capable competitors, except for a few fanatics who aren't enough to drive the market. MP3s lose some quality from CDs and FLAC/WAV, but who cares? They're more convenient. YouTube is a horrid example of this - everyone thinks blocky, tiny, hitching video is good enough because it's so convenient and there's so much content. So you have to reboot your mobile phone now and then or can't get coverage in some places, when land-lines work damn near 100% of the time - who cares? Apple knows this rule and uses it brilliantly - Mac OS and its apps do 95% of what people need and it don't bother you about or give you decision paralysis for the other 5% that only tech-heads want.
I find that Linux with package management does about 95% of what I need to do out of the box and I have to script the rest... but that's good enough for me to just run Debian on all my servers and not worry about it. It's worth not having to fetch and compile every damn dependency by scratch or wade through all of Windows's hideously incestuous server configuration crap. More to the point, I could run BSD on all those servers, but why bother? Yes, I know you have all sorts of technical reasons why I should, but they don't matter. It's good enough and more convenient.
I've got about 10 more examples but will shut up now, because I think I've made 95% of the point.
It's wired. "Good enough" pretty much describes the level of research they're willing to do in order to publish something. I wonder if this article isn't directly related to their own laziness.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The most well-known example of technology overkill is Windows XP and its successors. Think about it for a minute. How many of the functions in these operating systems do you actually use?
If an OSS advocate made this same argument as a reason to adopt Linux and OpenOffice, you'd have the OSS detractors screaming at him for not understanding business and productivity. I recall quite a flame fest over replacements for Adobe products a day or two ago.
Windows is popular despite that it is only good enough. Linux dominates the OSS market despite its myriad shortcomings. Plenty of better solutions have come and gone, but good enough solutions spread like wildfire because they are not actually optimized to be solutions. They are optimized for one thing: spreading.
Just callin' it like I see it.
I think the bare-bones and full featured are niches that will always exist.
Things like Notepad, Vi/Emacs and Notepad++
Google Docs, Microsoft Word/OpenOffice
Photoshop, GIMP then Paint.NET
Apache, lightHTTPd
Any other examples?
It's kind of sad that the most full featured projects are commercial. I think TIME makes all bare bones software into full featured. I mean, Word is 1983, it has been re-envisioned and re-written many times whereas Google Docs is built on a relatively recent platform.
The Pure Digital camcorder is just another niche. I doubt that the expensive camcorders lost sales to this? Or did they? Does Word lose sales to users of Google Docs?
I think the world wide web IS an example of worse is better! Desktop applications are faster, more capable and powerful yet we rely on relaying redundant TEXT and continually re-drawing the screen. ...terminal much?
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Recently, I read an article on slashdot that OSS UI development should stop imitating Mac and Windows, and should start innovating. Also, I've read various things from Eric Raymond and others that OSS should be prized for its innovativeness. But I think that's all wrong. OSS is most valuable when it's not innovative. The most successful OSS projects (like Linux, gcc, mysql, OpenSSL, and others) have been shameless clones, while the innovative OSS projects (like Hurd) died off. Of course there are exceptions, but usually OSS software is the generic drug of the software industry.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Your music listening ability is staggering.
Let's assume, exceptionally high quality bitrate files... So an average of 10MB each. And let's assume that each song is short at that size as well, so around 3 minutes in length on average...
40 GB = 40,000 MB
40,000 MB / 10 MB each = 4000 songs.
4000 songs * 3 minute each = 12000 minutes.
12000 minutes = 200 hours.
200 hours = 8.333 days (nonstop).
All in one week, eh?
Keep in mind that a 320kbps CBR MP3 will eat up about 2.2MB per minute, meaning that a 3 Minute MP3 at that bitrate would be only 6.6MB... So the 10 we used in this example is quite... liberal. And of course, rounding errors for using HDD manufacturer's definition of "GB". Also, unless you listen to some very specific genres of music, 3 minutes is not overly long for an average song length.
All that aside, if you like to have a ridiculous amount of music on you at all times, just say so. But for some reason it irritates me when people insist they listen to impossible amounts of music on a regular basis, so flash based players are inadequate.
I can see the qualitative argument for carrying a separate digital camera. Phone cameras run the gambit from "what is that supposed to be a photo of?" to "It's okay, but I wouldn't frame it, and I payed a fortune for this phone". But digital audio playback is great even on some cheap phones. Higher end smart phones are as well. Add that the fact that flash memory is cheap and abundant, and I don't see a reason to purchase a separate MP3 player unless the size of your phone, or battery life are issues.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
I am tired of all that "people are stupid and don't want quality" and "worse is better" crap. This is not true at all.
People want quality products that last, unless they are overpriced. The problem is, it's much harder to recognize quality, especially in modern products, thus there is no market pressure for it. But there is a market pressure from the investor's end to produce as much things as possible.
Ultimately, it's an issue of asymmetric information and trust. Consider buying a computer. Say, you have a 2 year warranty period in EU. You have two choices - one for 200$, and the other for 300$, but the producer claims it will last at least 3 years (but the warranty is still 2 years). So, which one are you going to choose? The cheaper one of course. Because you have no insurance that the other will not last say 2.5 year, in which case you would be screwed. This is a classic situation on a market with asymmetric information, as described in George Akerlof's Market for Lemons.
Furthermore, the companies want to sell as much product as they can. Company building products to last 20 years (with warranty, so assume you can trust this deal) would be at a disadvantage to company making products to last 5 years, because the profits of the latter would be higher (it costs more to produce 4 products than 1, so with the same margin, company can make more profit). In history, companies (mostly found by idealistic engineers) believed that building quality product is better, but in the 70s the MBA types they installed instead realized they are wrong, so that's why it went downhill ever since. Even if you would try to switch companies, if all of them are doing that, it gets useful.
It's just normal capitalism in play, but most people didn't know the rules at the beginning, and now that large companies started to optimize by the rules, it's just not fun anymore.
"Hooray for mediocrity" is not an excuse for doing crappy things the wrong way. Neither is "The Simpsons did it".
The Tata Nano car was not rejected because of consumerism or market protection, but because it is a low quality, highly dangerous piece of technology. Coupled with its cheapness and almost limitless availability, we all would've had a quagmire on the roads pretty quickly.
Just a few examples: seatbelts, the car safety feature that has saved more lives than the alcohol prohibition or the traffic light. A hard braking without actual impact can send you smashing on the steering wheel or knocking your teeth out - while with a seatbelt you and your car would've had no damage whatsoever. People not wearing seatbelts are very hesitating in applying full brake power in an emergency situation because of this and that would've cost lives of passengers, pedestrians and other drivers. That's why they're mandatory and why you're fined for not wearing them.
ABS: Drivers can do better than ABS but only if they're really experienced. We're talking about "half a million mile" or "NASCAR experience". Beginners cause the most crashes and one out of three drivers will have a situation where having ABS will mean the difference between sweating and loss of money, limb or life. Even if one is an experienced driver, I bet you hope the other guy is also experienced or has ABS. I hope on both.
The Nano is destined for markets where it is the only mobility alternative for much of the population and better than the ubiquitous scooter everyone has now. There, the Nano can decrease total road deaths simply because four wheels and a windshield are much safer in the downpouring rain that parts of India and Asia seasonally experience.
In Western markets, the Nano would increase road deaths, possibly up to terrible levels from the Fifties. I'm with you when you say we COULD omit air conditions, power windows, central locking, electric mirrors, electric hatches. But safety features like seatbelts (pennies), ABS (a few hundred bucks) or ESP (another few hundred bucks) will cost more if they're missing. You could not save more than 1500 bucks (at most) on manufacturing the car but the first accident will cost more than you'd ever saved in property damage alone. Or worse.
Extremely cold-heartedly saying: it costs about 150'000 bucks to raise and educate one kid to be an average adult in our society. Because of that, even if we all were the most heartless, profit-oriented bastards on earth, we'd equip our cars with all affordable safety features.
In doubt, drive to an empty street somewhere and practice maximum emergency braking, with and without wearing the seatbelt. Hesitated smashing your teeth on the steering wheel, even for a fraction of a second?. Wear a seatbelt, dude.
Obligatory wiki links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control
I myself use maybe 10%. There are parts (of Windows Vista) that I have never explored and will never explore. I just do not need all that functionality.
Yes, but who is to say that every user uses the same 10%? If most users only utilise 10%, I would think that these 10% segments overlap enough to cover a significant proportion of the total function of the OS.
Remember the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Let the Lord of Chaos Rule
As the first poster indicates, we are already there... or it's already here. But what does it mean?
New tech has certainly lost its luster and people are certainly realizing that new doesn't always mean better. But this cannot be the whole reason can it? Is this yet another sign of economic down-turn? Maybe, but for many, this started happening before the downturn really started having affect. I think it's the consumer pushing back and demanding value in larger and larger numbers. With every "new thing" that replaces old things that work just fine, we are seeing more and more "needless" advancement or changes that aren't really advancements at all.
We see this especially in things like Windows where resistance to moving away from "Just Fine" Windows XP to the newer, shinier "Aero" interfaced versions is surprisingly strong... well, surprising for Microsoft I am sure, and surprising when you see how abrupt this movement has been. After all, people had been discussing the new Windows for years with excitement only to be disappointed with all the most significant features removed. We see this in the shrinking numbers of "Hummer" vehicles on the road as well, though we might argue that has more to do with fuel costs than anything else, but from where I sit, Hummers are nothing more than oversized pickup trucks as they only bear slight resemblance to the HumVee which is what really excited people about "Hummer" in the first place, but "Looks like a HumVee" doesn't sell Hummers the way it did at first. People soon realized that there should be more to expensive cars than what it looks like and the price tag.
I think what the "push back" is all about it a crying out for "substance" in our new stuff. What all the new stuff we see these days really lacks is substance. I'm not saying that turds are not useful, but we want turds that are more than just polished... otherwise, our old turds are "just fine."
When MS Provides an OS for Cisco Routers...the end of the internet will be upon us.
I'm fine with getting two thirds with people off the road. We don't need the millions of automobiles out there.
Now would you be so kind to hand over your car keys and driver's license? You do want to follow your own example, right?
When you look back a few years, then "second grade" was inferior and often not up to speed. Remember those Cyrix processors, the kinda-sorta-intel-compatible ones? They were cheap, they were allegedly compatible, but often they were anything but "good enough". Or the cheap knockoff electronics that first came from Japan (in the 50s/60s) and then from China? They were kinda-sorta good, but if you wanted quality you headed for the real stuff.
Today, everything is from China. The allegedly "good stuff" and the cheap knockoffs, often they come from the same conveyor belt. Brand name is no longer a sign and guarantee for quality. Manufacturers, or rather, the companies that have others manufacture for them more and more these days, realized that it's cheaper to produce cheap products that break sometimes/often and just replace them under warranty. Of 100 pieces you sell, maybe 70 will work ok, of the 30 non working ones you'll get 20 thrown back, the other 10 will just toss it and buy something new or don't know enough about the merchandize to even realize it doesn't work as advertised. That's cheaper than producing quality goods where 99 of 100 will work.
Another thing is life expectancy. 40 years ago, you could sensibly expect your TV to last at least a decade. And you also had it for a decade, it was expensive enough to have it repaired if its magic smoke escaped. Today, you'll be lucky to have it for more than its warranty period. But even that is 'good enough'. By the time those 2 years are over, some new standard is coming out and you want a new set anyway.
It actually is "good enough". People don't expect things to last anymore. And often don't even want them to last. They want cheap. They want cheaper. They want new, shiny stuff and not cling to that old appliance forever and a day. Quality, of course, suffers in such an environment. It's very difficult to get quality products anymore, if you need some, you will have to look very carefully.
And if you find something, inform me. I'm looking for quality instead of cheap, but I can't find anything anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
>>>assuming most end-users would get this 'WinMin' OS instead of WinXP/Vista
I'd simply run Win95 or NT 4. Have you ever seen how fast these OSes operate on a modern PC - zoom-zoom! I've never understood why somebody somewhere doesn't take these ancient OSes, add a few extra drivers like USB, and run them. Win NT 4 can run on just 8 megabytes! Imagine how cheaply computers could be made if they only used ~1/500th as much RAM.
Today's modern OSes really and truly are top-heavy monstrosities.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Well, if it isn't the leader of the weiner patrol, boning up on his nerd lessons
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
ABS extends stopping distance. Want proof? Go out in a parking lot and "lock 'em up" Now pull your ABS fuse and do it again. It's quite a difference. Credentials: Electrical Engineer, Muscle/Tuner/EV Builder/Racer and Professional driver.
Now do it while steering around an obstacle.
I agree. You and I have no choice but to live in the suburbs far from everywhere. Sacrifice is something other people should do.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
Reminds me of a guy laughing about the amount of precision his job required -- he worked under that mountain from which World War III was expected to be fought. Radio interviewer asked him about accuracy of the missiles used.
He said with what they were throwing, hitting anywhere in the time zone would suffice for their purposes.
Then he laughed and said no, no, only kidding.