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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.
not buy it.
The good ideas/products will stay, the bad ones will die away. That's how evolution works.
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.
After my annoyance grew at all of the silly "WE GO HANDS-ON!!" posts on sites like engadget which ended up on my RSS feed in large numbers I took all those gadget/tech product sites off of the list..
It was actually kind of surprising this morning to learn the CES thing was already over..... after only seeing a few posts about it.
at this point I have to wonder why anyone really covers this CES thing.. All of the pointless HANDS ON!!! filler stuff barely gives people an idea of what the product is, and well, much of it might never be available for purchase anyways... Then you get some silly guy who has 3 minutes to demo the HOT ITEMS on a CNN segment.. again.. not giving us any real idea of what the product is..
At one time I think this stuff interested me.. but sheez. ..from a consumer perspective.. these trade shows seem nothing more but an opportunity for blogs and newspapers to fill up on fluff pieces.
we can look forward to NAMM in a few weeks!
Visual reference
Knids: http://www.roalddahlfans.com/books/charglasknids.php
Clippy: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991755,00.html
He's loveable, cuddly and his extensible architecture allowed attackers in 2001 to inject malware with a single click. But Clippy is not the only gadget phenomenon with unintended features. The world is full of crappy and predatory engineering.
Predatory Engineering: underrated power supplies that run hot; expensive computers with glass bezel displays under tension snapped together with no screws which crack if one attempt to open them; automobiles where software action can cause acceleration; software (not hardwired discrete component) ABS braking or shift management; personal accessories such as headsets with thin wound-foil cords that have no strain relief whatsoever and fail at the slightest jerk; $600 TVs which wind up in the trash because of malfunctioning half cent click-buttons or 5 cent IR receivers; trapezoid shaped mini-USB connectors which actively participate in their own destruction on every attempt to plug them in upside down; and more.
Crappy Engineering, such as power windows in cars with no crank or even provision for one. Parents love power windows and the assurance that comes from disabling the master button, they'll love their power windows all the way to the bottom of the lake as the screaming family tries to beat out the windows with their bare hands. The trick is to wait until the entire vehicle fills with water, then the pressure equalizes and you can open the door and tow your drowned kids to the surface. Good luck.
I love writing about modern technology.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Every tool man has created has had some level of social impact.
But not necessarily for the better. Agriculture brought drugs and alcohol. The bronze age brought weapons and armor, and the iron age brought even more weapons. The car has brought massive polution. The iPhone brought us iMaps. And so on and so on.
Embrace change and react to it.
We don't need to embrace change and pretend it's progress. Our needs are being met. We can decide if new technologies are worth the price, in actual dollars and in the effort in switching to something new.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Every single one of the "fitness" devices was designed to harvest your data and keep it hostage. not ONE of the products I looked at or talked to the guys at the booth kept your data private on your computer or Phone. All of them are "cloud based" and none of them let you have access to your raw data.
It seems that companies have zero ability to hire engineers that can make a real product that is not dripping in "lock in" or "data mining". And I personally am sick of it.
Outside of those, there was ZERO innovation at CES. Nothing at all that was a game changer like Google Glass, just a bunch of "mee too" rehashes of the exact same junk from last year.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.