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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
For doing the decent thing and linking to the print-preview version of the article.
Which is why, since I was quite young, my rule has always been:
Until I can buy a unit of it, by a convenient method, with guaranteed delivery, it doesn't exist.
There's no point cooing over something that's "coming soon". You just add to hype around a product that may not even exist and - even if it does - you can't yet buy anyway. Until it is directly purchasable and will arrive at your door on a guaranteed date, it means nothing.
The number of products I've seen that never were (Phantom console, etc.), the number of products that were junk by they time they came out (e.g. Duke Nukem Forever, etc.), the number of products that just never reached critical mass or got into a reasonable price bracket (e.g. Optimus OLED keyboards, the "open source" graphics cards that are still based on a PCI/AGP architecture, etc.), and even the number of existing-but-completely-mismanaged projects that would have had me kicking myself for ever buying into (e.g. OpenPandora where pre-orderers are still waiting to receive units four years later having paid twice as much as those who can just order one from Germany today with guaranteed delivery, with little chance of a refund or unit without paying again) - it's just astounding. I would have wasted SO MUCH money on them if I didn't have my rule.
So I ignore everything that isn't purchasable. It might be as cool as anything, solve all my problems and do everything I always dreamed of. Great. Give me a call back when I can buy one. These affordable 40" OLED TV's I was promised nearly a decade ago? Still £20,000 from what I see.
I was promised tablet PC's back in the XP era. They've JUST come to fruition at one-tenth the cost (so actually affordable now), don't use Windows (well, soon they will, but that's very new), you can get them everywhere now, and I can't say that I see the use of them. If I'd bought in back in the XP era, I'd be really disappointed.
Am I disinterested in new products? Of course not. I was one of the first owners of a Raspberry Pi (as soon as they offered guaranteed orders + delivery) and had one before anyone else I know (was in the first batch, which meant you had to order within minutes of the announcement).
And I do support some kickstarters, but those where I will get the product or something worthwhile (e.g. Defense Grid 2 for a small backing - I got a DG1 key GUARANTEED and a video card GUARANTEED that I gave to my brother for Christmas that was worth the price alone, plus I get DG 1.5 next week I think - there are already at the Steam-key phase for deploying that, and I get DG2 whenever it comes out) and where they have manufacturing all sorted and ready to go and guaranteed dates.
I can't support those where the product doesn't even exist yet, or they offer you only "backing" for the project. I *have* supported some products purely on the basis of trust but we're talking literally a few dollars - and I'm GUARANTEED a copy of the game if it comes out. That's breaking my rule but never happens for anything of any significant value (if the projects existed in a working, deliverable state, I would happily back 10 times the amount I did without even thinking).
I can remember as a kid being disappointed so many times at the cool things I thought were coming "this year" and hanging on and waiting and waiting and checking up and waiting and never hearing of them again (even up to today!). All the great inventions and marvellous products and cool services. Nothing. And the ones that DID succeed, they succeed at the point you can buy them - and at that point, you can buy them and get them delivered and know what you are buying.
I think Aliens:Colonial Marines looks really nice and it looks like the game I've been promised and wanted since the days of Aliens (US) on the ZX Spectrum (damn, that movie is old!). It's on pre-purchase now. But I've not yet seen it. It's already been delayed a year from it's original date, and then a month again just now (was originally January). An
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.