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How the Cool Stuff At CES Will Ruin Your Life
jfruh writes "Another CES has come and gone, and as usual the press has presented rather uncritically a list of super-cool gadgets that were unveiled at the show and that will make our world better. Let's leave aside the fact that many products shown at CES never make it to market; Paul Roberts provides the pessimistic case on the big CES news, explaining how all these gewgaws will strip away privacy, unleash an army of Clippys onto the world, and maybe even change human brains for the worse."
Just attending CES will change your brain for the worse.
Don't feel forced to use gadgetry. There's something called "life" that doesn't require much of it to be enjoyed.
When I was younger, I used to enjoy immersing myself in the latest and greatest toys, back in the 80s and 90s. Many things were new and fun. Nowadays the things of the future presented at shows like CES seem more like evolutions of existing concepts. Nothing really earth-shatteringly new.
As a result, I must admit I've pretty much lost interest, and the fog of high-tech addiction has cleared so to speak. I've realized that a simpler life is more enjoyable and less stressful. Not to mention, non-early-adopters tend to waste a lot less money than those who can't wait to buy the latest semi-working banana product doodah.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What is this maybe crap? Oh sure like THIS is the year we'll all wise up suddenly and stop dumping our money on people who make cheap plastic badly made crap.
The pursuit of profit above all else... Excessive greed.. Is really fucking up humanity.
For doing the decent thing and linking to the print-preview version of the article.
Every tool man has created has had some level of social impact. Embrace change and react to it. Don't fear it.
The strange paradox is that people don't seem to accept that opting out is a valid choice.
/rant
For example, I refuse to buy PC games or programs that use online activation - I disagree with the philosophy of allowing other people to dictate when I may use something I have bought. I would not accept it for a car, I would not accept it for a toaster. Why should I accept it for software? That it greatly reduces my choices in the market place is besides the point - I vote with my feet and will continue doing so. And yet, my friends think I'm nuts because - omg - I'm not up to date with whatever hot title just came out. How can I live?? Really, I don't feel like entertainment is worth compromising my principles for
Likewise, if you really prefer your printer from the 1990s, spend the money it's worth to you to get it fixed or retrofitted to keep operating with modern ink, or be prepared to do without. Don't accept substandard. Don't accept exploitative business practices. But the increasingly common refrain is that "One person won't change anything", much like saying that voting for a third party is wasting your vote. If people were prepared to stand up for their principles instead of falling over for the shiney gadget, we would all be better off.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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- electric starters
- automatic transmissions
- power steering
- power breaks
- anti-lock breaks
- heating/defrosters
- air conditioning
- do I really need to list more?
Operating an automobile has become much, much easier. So easy in fact that almost all adults and many teenagers can do it properly. Imagine that. A large, dangerous piece of machinery that travels at high speed was dumbed down so even the the most "watered down" among us can use it. What's next, TVs or maybe even computers?
The idea is to make information and entertainment as easily accessible as possible to the most people as possible (while still being able to make a profit). Tablets are easier for a lot of people and they like that so they are buying them. You don't get to decide the level of intelligence required to suck at the teet of the internet.
not buy it. The good ideas/products will stay, the bad ones will die away. That's how evolution works.
Spoken like a true "free market" fan-boy. Alas, the real world does not work the way it does in the fictional novels of Rand et al. A truly free market requires fully informed consumers. If you believe that the average iPhone user is fully informed about all the issues arising from his/her use of that particular technology, you are truly a fool. As TFA points out, the market is about to explode with this kind of complex technology which contains features and functionality that are deliberately hidden from the consumer. Consumers will, in blissful ignorance, buy this shit, not understanding how their privacy has been sold. I don't give a damn about analogues of Clippy on my refrigerator's GUI, but I damn well want to be able to muzzle his ass when he tries to phone home about what I'm eating. No, I want him muzzled by default unless/until I choose to let him phone home to Kroger/Safeway/Albertson's or whichever giant grocer has paid to have him keep tabs on my pickle supply.
Software that phones home to make sure you didn't rip it off is cheaper than software that has to be priced to take into account the fact that it can and will be ripped off. You aren't forced to use some company's phone-home software, so your concerns about law aren't grounded. What you're buying is a service that happens to involve a licensed piece of software. If you want the exact same flavor of game to run without phoning home, start up a game company that charges enough per copy to cover piracy losses, and see how it goes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The GGP's claim was that "market forces" will result in survival of the best products. GP's claim was that software seems to be getting worse, not because new products come out and win over old products, but that sole-source vendors change their product for the worse and eliminate the old product (possibly with the goal of forcing the market to buy the new product).
Parent's solutions are a) write your own million man-hour software or b) go open source. Both of these amount to stepping outside of the wonderful free market, and a frank admission that the free market fails to produce software alternatives and therefore fails to identify "good value" in software. Or possibly tech-products in general. With a market dominated by a handful of megacorps, Adam Smith's economics of a hundred-competing-bakers just doesn't work.
Natural selection doesn't give a crap about what YOU think is good or bad. Sometimes natural selection seems to favor traits that aren't what appear to be the strongest. But, pretending like Amiga having some cool features is all that it takes for a product to dominate and drive the market is silly, not insightful. While there were many cool things about the Amiga, it was released after IBM was already fairly well-established. People actually cared if software and hardware was "IBM compatible" long after even IBM faded into the background of the consumer hardware market. If Amigas were actually better considering all what defines better (including compatibility, company management, marketing, not just some hardware specs) they would have won out.