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Where Have All the Gadgets Gone?
waderoush writes "How many electronic gadgets did you own in 2005? How many do you own today? The answer is almost certainly a lot fewer. Counter to the dominant trend in consumer technology since the 1920s — and despite predictions of a coming 'Internet of things' — there may actually be *less* electronic stuff in our homes and offices today than ever before. That's thanks largely to the rise of multipurpose wireless devices like smartphones and tablets, which are now powerful enough to replace many older, dedicated devices like point-and-shoot cameras, music players, digital voice recorders — even whole home entertainment systems. To prove the point, here are before-and-after photos from one San Francisco household (mine) where the herd of digital devices has been thinned from about three dozen, eight years ago, to just 15 today."
Uh? What's going on here?
Also note the pictures: It seems he changed, not the world in general.
In 2005 we see a microwave and stuff that seems to be a lot of mobile phones and remote controls. What is preventing him from getting lots of unused mobile phones today? The remotes seem to belong to the stuff below the TV, he got rid of his fancy stereo (with CD-player, amp, loudspeakers).
Yes, the world changed. Yes, you need fewer gadgets. No, personal experience is not evidence and I think those pictures show only a change in his personality: From a young "I need to have every crap" he went to understanding he does not need every crap. Apart from that, the reduction we see in the pictures is not impressive at all. And apart from that, "personal experience" is no evidence for global developments.
I don't even have a mobile (cell) phone. I think my collection of gadgets is about the same.
Anyway, the more important question is "what is the sacrifice you are making by embracing multi-purpose devices?" A DSLR will produce better photos than your iPhone (or whatever). A point-n-click camera will also. A dedicated scanner is likely to produce a better scan than a scanner tacked on to a printer. I could find examples relevant to the other examples as well but there is no point because they are easy to find. I, personally, would prefer a dedicated "gadget" that does one thing and does it well over a gadget that does many things but with less quality. YMMV.
Maybe some people are choosing to replace game consoles and such with tablets, but i'm not. I've still got a PS3 and a Wii. I've still got a digital camera that i use to take "important" pictures because it does a much better job than my phone. I admit i haven't used my dedicated mp3 players in awhile, but i think that's the only device that's actually been phased out. Of course that only got phased out because i got a smartphone, so that evens that out i guess. And since then i've also added a Nook, a tablet and a Roku.
Perhaps if you have less electronic devices it's because you decided you wanted less?
Of course going by the sample pictures it looks like you have a lot of redundant pieces of electronics that i never bothered with. I've had one "boombox" type stereo system pretty much my entire life. No need for separate CD players or tuners, and i've certainly never needed a turntable!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
So he went from a lot of manufacturers; Sony, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, etc, to one single electronics vendor, Apple. How do you keep so unbiased!
One thing I immediately figured out FTFA, don't overlay your photos with stupid transparencies. What, there is not enough space in HTML page? What, we don't have scroll bars?
I couldn't even bother to read anything below the pictures, which I couldn't even look at because of that stupid transparency layer.
You can't handle the truth.
Where have all the gadgets gone?
Long time charging
Where have all the gadgets gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the gadgets gone?
Gone to smartphones, every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Your point?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
The assertion holds true for the poor and people who are happy to be owned by a corporation. If you are wealthy a separate device still has the better performance - battery life, camera sensor size etc. If you dont want to be owned by a corporation then you probably will be avoiding anything called an "App" or any thing from Apples walled garden iChains. I am on holiday at the moment. I have with me a laptop, cell phone, two mirrorless camera bodies, a high end point and shoot, a IPV67 GPS, an ebook, a Sony mp3 player. To be fair I have stopped carrying around a radio these days, at least a broadcast reception radio because there is usually WiFi in the hotel - but I still have the pair of PMR walkie talkies for places out of cell coverage. I have never had so many gadgets before in my life, the idea of giving up the abilities of all these separate tools for a smartphone with a battery life of less than a day is abhorrent to me. They are all right for youngsters.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
In the TFA, he speculates that these multipurpose devices are now "good enough" to suit most needs, and I think that is true, But it is true that the quality of our audio and video experience seems to have gotten worse of the last couple of years.
When it look at the pictures, or listen to the audio generated by the phones and tablets, or watch the video. It works, but, it just isn't very good.
What's happening is that the middle layer of high-end consumer products are just vanishing: everything is either multipurpose devices or pro devices.
For me, anyway, I still use digital camera and I still use dedicated audio that I used to play CDs and records. I'm a grumpy old man, I guess, but, it sounds better.
I've just purchased two old Casio organizers via E-Bay and a calculator! This proves conclusively that the author is wrong.
It can be old, broken and useless . . . but a geek will still hoard it. Every geek has a drawer, a box, a closet, or a garage stuffed with useless stuff. There just might be some possibility that it will be good for something in the future. Maybe the Zombie Apocalypse will infect Ethernet, so I will need that PCMCIA Token Ring card?
Every time I go digging for something it's like a Computer Archeological Wonderland. Wow! BASIC programs on paper tape! The old HP 41C calculator!
I never own less gadgets . . . just more. Where have all my gadgets gone? Who knows. But they are around here somewhere, and can find them if I look hard enough.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Where has the microwave gone? I'm not aware of any technological developments since 2005 that has "converged" the microwave into any other device. Also, none of the devices he displays in the 2013 seems able to displace a microwave (unless there's some new app I'm not aware of). Hence, we must conclude that this article merely represents the lifestyle choices made by this particular person, with no relevance to the rest of the population.
What do you mean by owned by a corporation? Why should owning one device mean you're owned by a corporation?
Does that mean if you have more devices you're not owned by a corporation and instead owned by more corporations?
You can always switch to a different multi-use device.
The "do one thing perfectly" bit works pretty well with software, and in an unlimited or at least "big" environment.
I don't see how that carries over very well to the hardware in my jacket pocket, though.
Yes, I *do* quite like having a portable multipurpose device that performs many communications and data retrieval/display tasks acceptably well. I certainly don't want to carry a phone, an e-reader, an mp3 player, and an Internet pad on my morning ride on the subway when my smartphone will let me get phone calls, read my novel, listen to that Sun Ra album I found last night, and check the weather forecast to see if there's a chance the rain will clear out by lunchtime, all in one go.
But since you've evidently lots of pockets, go right ahead. :)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The change from some Bang & Olufsen speakers to the earbuds was a real winner... Most of his choices revolve arround the adoption of Apple products.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
"Do one thing perfectly" works well in some hardware, worse in other cases. Cameras are a case where the physics dictates the size of the optics needed for certain capabilities, so to get eg good telephoto capability or good low-light capability one needs a dedicated lens.
Likewise with printers. Sure an inkjet all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax is nice, but there are still uses for large format printers & scanners, and high-volume copiers. They're just not needed for the average household, so the specialized devices are relegated to the businesses and hobbyists that need them.
Not a sentence!
"The best camera is the one that's with you"
An enthusiastic amateur photographer might well have an iPhone, a point-and-click and a DSLR. It's fair to guess that the amateur has his iPhone 90% of the time, his point-and-click 20% of the time, and the DSLR and accessories maybe 5% of the time.
So perhaps the more important question is "what is the sacrifice you are making by NOT embracing multi-purpose devices?". Baby's first smile? "Hang on honey, I'll run upstairs to get my camera bag". Too late.
Where all new gadgets go when they die, the trashcan in the sky
That's in China, right?
OK, so he doesn't like good sound quality, so he got rid of the decent speakers and replaced it with Apple rubbish (that sound good to bad ears because they've just turned up the loudness and done wacky artificial things to phasing of the stereo signal). And same with cameras (personally, I think people who publish photos taken with an iphone should be shot for polluting the flow of electrons with their crappy photos). Where did his microwave go? Does he entirely eat out now? Concrete floor? Sounds lovely.
Heck, I still go on multiday tours on motorbike (with not much spare room besides my tent and sleeping bag) with SLR and second lense *because it produces better photos*. It's a pity a lot of people don't care about quality anymore, but some of us still do.
a) I still own all electronic devices which i owned in 2005, so the absolute number has increased
b) I did not have three dozens of Gadgets in 2005
c) Not even the number of "active" gadgets has decreased. active back then:
* camera (compact)
* mobile phone (Nokia 6310i)
* palm (z31) (replaced also a stolen mp3 player)
Now:
*camera (compact)
*mobile phone #1 (galaxy note II) - playing/reading documents/consuming media/surfing the web/feeds/google+
*mobile phone #2 (nokia e63) - workhorse for phone calls and emails
*ebook reader (sony) - use it when in eant a quite time in a bright place on a bench to read a good book (leave the other devices at home)
*mp3 player (Used for sports/biking - before owning the galaxy note used also everyday)
*tablet (galazy tab - surfing on th couch)
I like that the gadgets got more diversified. Its just convenient.
Just looking at the pictures shows how his attitude has changed.
In 2005 he thought it was cool to show (and have?) as much as possible, including all phones, his microwave and other assorted things.
In 2013 he does not have a microwave anymore? Seriously?
He only uses two speakers of his 5.1 system?
And no router, hub or any other network connection anywhere? Not in either image?
To me it seems that either his way of living has changed. e.g. eating healthier (Drop the coffee then) or he really wanted to show as little as possible where in the old picture he wanted to show as much as possible.
When I look at myself, I am still at about the same in numbers. If I do not use something for one year, it is out. Some things just have replaced other things. e.g. the NAS has replaced the CD/VHS player.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
> To prove the point, here are before-and-after photos from one San Francisco household (mine) where the herd of digital devices has been thinned from about three dozen, eight years ago, to just 15 today.
Awesome. Once burglary was a real hit and miss. Now your victims case their places for you. Even lists his dog. Google tells me his dog it is an Australian Sheppard. Sound docile enough. I can always get it drunk lol.
http://www.wikifido.com/page/Rhody
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Shepherd#Temperament
Now when will Wade be out of town?
Xconomy robotics event 4/11 https://twitter.com/wroush
"Far too many people have too much information online as to their schedules and what they will be attending and where." http://protectitnow.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/your-home-security-never-before.html
I'll just have to arrive early to beat the crowd. I have dibs on the Canon Powershot S5 IS and the iPhone5.
What do you mean by owned by a corporation? Why should owning one device mean you're owned by a corporation?
Does that mean if you have more devices you're not owned by a corporation and instead owned by more corporations?
You can always switch to a different multi-use device.
I think he means owned as in pwned. The point being that the cost of switching in both time and money becomes so high that you stay with the company.
The more DRM'ed software and data you use, or the more apps for which there isn't a port or the API is proprietary, the more you owe your soul to the company (app) store.
You don't have to reprogram your calendar, re-buy office software, stop playing your favourite game and set up numerous accounts again if you change your camera from company A to B. Unless, of course, that camera is on a mult-function device. Then you have a strong reason not to change your camera, or if you do, stick to the same company. Pwned.
Doomed to mediocrity too, given that a multi-function device is always a jack of all trades, master of none.
I like the freedom to choose, and change individual gadgets easily. You don't need the modern day equivalents of TVs with built-in VCRs, and if you think a little ahead, you probably don't want them either.
You know that guy with the shiny smille and a device that does lots more things than yours does? Don't follow him; he's a Judas goat.
My gadgets are multiplying like rabbits. Hell, I have five game consoles on my *desk*.
A coupla cell phones, tablets, laptops, several computers, printers, a PDA I still use, portable game systems, and a rats-nest of cables and switchboxes tying it all together.
Out under the TV I've got a VCR, HD-DVD, DVR, and a network media player. I have so many gizmos in the kitchen that it takes forever to reset all the clocks for DST. (Whyinhell does a fridge need a clock on it, anyway?)
This isn't even counting all the gadgets I have left over from ages past that are packed away and no longer used.
My cell phone hasn't replaced my 'portable music player'. My car has. (And the PMP was a Walkman.) The only other gizmo my cell phone has really replaced was the -really tiny- laptop I used to carry around for SSH use and light browsing. (A Toshiba Libretto 50CT.)
Sure, there are gizmos that do -more- than they used to, but none of them do -all- of what I need my crapola to do, so I wind up with a bunch of them. I have a really nice tablet. I also have a netbook. Why? Sometimes I just want battery life and timekillers, and other times I need to run full computer software.
(Although I could probably ditch the netbook if someone pointed me at a full Windows XP emulator for Android - all I can find is QEMU, which only works up to 98.)
Convergence may have gotten rid of the need for multiple devices, but devices are much more personal these days. Rather than one phone per household, it is one phone per person. Instead of one computer per household, it is one computer or tablet per person.
A lot of the old gadgets will still exist anyway. An individual may have a tablet to watch TV alone, but they will also have a TV to watch as a family. An individual may have a tablet for web browsing, but there will still be a computer for the kids to type up their school papers. While most families will be perfectly happy with their camera phone, any family with a photo nut will also have a digital camera. (The prior statement applies for most hobbies.)
As for that disappearing microwave, I don't see how he managed that. It was a lot easier to cook eggs with your CPU in 2005 after all.
Does his Macbook run hot enough to replace his microwave?
Doomed to mediocrity too, given that a multi-function device is always a jack of all trades, master of none.
Part of the difficulty is that they're really a jack of all trades, master of many. I gave away my old point-and-shoot camera, that cost me a few hundred dollars a just few years ago, because the camera on the iPhone gave better results. Not only do the pictures look better, but it automatically tags the photo with positional data, which is something that I specifically want.
My iPhone is also a great at other things, and I don't think that it's limited to Apple. Modern cell phones do a lot of things incredibly well. Yes, you're forced to do business with a big corporation to have them, but really, what's the alternative that you would advocate? Building your own computers out of sticks and dirt?
As electronic dogs get older, they generate more static, which makes their hair stand up a bit more...
Around that time, I got into geocaching. I'd walk into the woods with a GPS the size of a paperback book, a digital camera, my flip phone, and a Palm Pilot. Maybe an MP3 player.
Now that's all one device, but...
Now everything on my house is on the net: printer, home media server, satellite TV, Blu-Ray, home theater receiver, tablet, media streamer, Twine sensor box
Interesting trade.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Yes, I *do* quite like having a portable multipurpose device that performs many communications and data retrieval/display tasks acceptably well.
Multipurpose phones are nice because you've always got it with you when you unexpectedly need some function it provides. But I don't think they are often a replacement for the dedicated hardware...
If I'm out and about and unexpectedly want to take a photo then sure, I'll use my phone. But if I was expecting to want to take photos I take my point and shoot camera or DSLR.
If I unexpectedly need a GPS, I'll use my phone. But if I'm going walking I'll take my dedicated GPS.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
In the 80s and 90s, a computer from a few years ago wouldn't just be slow, it would be absolutely obsolete. It wouldn't even run new software.
That's still true on consoles. Xbox and GameCube were abandoned fairly quickly in favor of Xbox 360 and Wii. It's also true on mobile, where phones still being sold today can't run some of the apps on Google Play Store because the apps require Android 4.x and the devices are stuck on 2.x.
You have a laptop that can run everything handily
Except companies stopped making 10" laptops at the end of 2012 because they want customers to start buying a separate, higher-margin laptop and tablet instead.
and a phone that includes the PDA.
Except it can be far more expensive to consolidate. A PDA such as the Galaxy Player or iPod touch costs $0 per month more than what one's already paying for Internet. Replacing your dumbphone with a smartphone, on the other hand, means replacing a $7/mo bill with a $35/mo bill (source: virginmobileusa.com) because a lot of carriers refuse to activate voice-only service on a smartphone.
On the contrary, everything that can be transferred onto newer media and emulated, should be
Unfortunately, such preservation is contingent on the continued periodic renewal of an exception in copyright law for circumventing copy protection on media for obsolete devices.
Turing is god.
Can god die? Turing did.
Hoarding old hardware does not make any sense. I hate old hardware. I lived in that era, and I always hated the limitations and crankiness of the hardware of that age.
I'm inclined to agree with you, with one exception: my classic game consoles. How much do you think it'd cost to buy a cartridge reader for each of a half dozen game consoles?
In addition, there's still a vibrant hobbyist game development scene on the NES, and I keep my NES around specifically for that. I guess part of that is because the NES is close to the limit of graphical complexity that one amateur can feasibly create without having to pull together a team in one's home town. Emulation is still imperfect because more things are still being discovered about the NES's inner workings even in 2013, nearly thirty years after the Famicom first came out in Japan, and it's very possible to write a program that behaves differently on an NES than in an emulator.
The average person really isn't looking hard enough to recognize the difference in picture quality between an iphone and a serious camera. My old digital shoots much better pictures than an iphone, and my girlfriend's 1 year old cheap digital camera also shoots MUCH better pictures, but most of the time nobody's going to notice.
Examples of where the iphone shines and falters vs dslr:
http://connect.dpreview.com/post/2863436371/leaving-my-dslr-at-home-iphone-experiment
A lot of people don't need a camera that shoots in low light, extreme detail, or fast action. I needed to send my insurance company photos from an accident where I was rear ended before, my wife's cheapo digital took perfectly detailed photos in the evening effortlessly, with or without flash. The iphone just left us with a blurry mess, we were grateful to have her camera with us. In another situation I was selling a vehicle and a potential buyer wanted to see the paint quality, the iphone really just couldn't take a good enough picture to handle that. Our 3 year old dslr took wonderful pictures and helped me make a sale in that situation. Finally, I have kids in kickboxing and we all race motocross. Trying to take pictures of any of this with an iphone feels like trying to get a portrait artist to sketch live action. The dslr is a requirement for us to catch any of these moments decently.
Bottom line: You might not need a "real camera". If you need to take pictures in low light, extreme detail and zoom, or live action you do. If you don't, and you aren't a perfectionist the iphone is actually a better choice for you, and you can always borrow a dslr from a friend for some rare occasion.
What do you mean there is no Robot Heaven?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Most of that doesn't matter when lined up against the phone's camera massive advantage: it is always with me.
DSLR cameras do take better pics, but then it's another device I have to carry around. And for 80% of the pics I take, the phone is good enough.
I personally have about the same number of devices as I did through the decades but I have a lot more gadgets. I used to have a cell phone for phone calls and texting, a camera for taking pictures, and a portable audio player (Walkman then Discman then MP3 player) for listening to music. I now own a phone that does all of that, but I also have an 8mp digital camera that takes better pictures and an MP3 player that is more compact and comfortable when I go to the gym. I've never owned a stand-alone GPS but I now have one in my phone. If I had a day-to-day need for a GPS or needed better accuracy for hiking or geocaching I would get one for that purpose. I have never owned a stand-alone handheld gaming system but my phone can do that too. Of course, if I was serious about handheld gaming I'd get something like a PS Vita. When I looked into getting an eReader I ended up with an Android tablet. It works as an eReader plus everything my phone does plus plays HD videos and even hooks up to my TV via HDMI. I bought a Bluetooth dongle for my car and can read engine codes with it. But now I wish I had got a one-trick-pony eReader for the better display and longer battery life.
Author of TFA here. So many people have mentioned the microwave that I had to respond. Yes, I still have a microwave! It's built into the kitchen and it belongs to my landlord, so I wasn't about to rip it out for the "after" photo. I should have made that clear in the original text, which has now been updated.
Thanks, (almost) everyone, for engaging seriously with the premise of the article. Of course it's anecdotal, of course I was writing about my own experiences. This is a given when you're writing a personal essay. But my guess -- and it seems to be correct, from a lot of the comments -- was that a lot of other people have also noticed that they're able to get along with fewer gadgets, especially since the new wave of touchscreen mobile gadgets are basically the Swiss army knives of electronics. Others haven't had this experience, and that's fine. My real point was that it's possible to get the same stuff done today with fewer tools.
Sorry if my preference for Apple products put off a bunch of readers, but the theme would hold up even if I were an Android or Windows customer.
It sounds like my Galaxy S3 has a better camera than your iPhone. However, it still only takes good photos in a limited range of circumstances. Or, perhaps more accurately, it takes surprisingly good photos for a limited range of compositions. My Nikon DSLR can take a lot of photos that the phone can't take. It can zoom, for a start. And, because the lens i use has vibration reduction, i can take handheld photos in very low light.
However, the wide angle lens of the phone can get photos that the Nikon can't get (but only because i haven't got a wide angle lens for it). And the phone can take panoramic shots, which the DSLR can't. In the end though, a good photographer can take good photos with a bad camera, but a bad photographer can't take good photos with a good camera. Have you ever tried taking duckface selfies with a DSLR?
Most importantly, the phone is always with me - and the best shot is the one you took, not the one you could have taken if you'd had a camera with you.
I've always loved (D)SLR cameras, but I've found that I miss a lot more pictures if I insist on using them, since there are always times when I don't want to carry all that baggage around. So instead, I use my knowledge to concentrate on getting the best out of my phone's camera. Sure, the hardware has a lot of limitations, but if you pay attention and take a bit of care, you can often end up with pictures that are just as pleasing.
DSLR? A decent compact will out-perform a phone camera by miles. We have a cheap-ish Canon Powershot, and the comparison between the shots it takes and any iDevice pictures I see people come up with? Not even close. Anyone with a basic understanding of optics could tell you why, too: lens size. Phone or tablet cameras will always be grainy, because of simple photon count (unless you extend your shutter time, but then you get blurry messes).
Yes, an iProduct is "good enough" for most people, but that's because most people have a bad eye for picture-taking or picture quality. Some of us have higher standards (and, I'm not even close to being a pro - I leave that to some very skilled friends of mine).
Maybe it's because I have kids: ergo, everything photgraphable is "live action", and often indoors.
Except it can be far more expensive to consolidate. A PDA such as the Galaxy Player or iPod touch costs $0 per month more than what one's already paying for Internet. Replacing your dumbphone with a smartphone, on the other hand, means replacing a $7/mo bill with a $35/mo bill (source: virginmobileusa.com) because a lot of carriers refuse to activate voice-only service on a smartphone.
This isn't actually anything to do with the devices in question, this is shitty US mobile networks squeezing you for money because they can. Can't you keep paying for a voice-only plan, turn off data on the smartphone and swap the SIM card over? Or are you talking about signing up for a 24 month plan and getting a 'free' smartphone?
Can't you keep paying for a voice-only plan, turn off data on the smartphone and swap the SIM card over?
Not especially. A lot of popular prepaid carriers in the United States are MVNOs on Sprint's CDMA2000 network, and CDMA2000 handsets in the United States typically do not use a removable CSIM. Even on GSM, AT&T has been known to add a data plan to any SIM used in a device whose IMEI is detected as that of a "smartphone" even if data is turned off.