People have been predicting that technology has gotten out of hand since, well, renaissance times... Sure things are being invented, built and marketed faster than ever before, but that's been true since the industrial revolution started. My Grandmother relies on a fancy electronic device to monitor her blood-sugar levels (she's diabetic) and losing that capability would, at best, complicate her life. But how many people really *need* to be talking on that cell phone, or plugging that new DVD into their home theater system, or spend an hour editing and re-editing their response to a response to a Jon Katz article?
Personally, I've already taken steps to simplify my life and I've found that, while I enjoy playing stupid games on the computer, or watching TV (down to 3 hours or less a week now), or cranking up Course of Empire past 11, I can also do without.
Henry David Thoreau said, "Simplify, simplify." Of course, he took his own advice and had his laundry done and ate out a lot while staying at Walden...
I first ran across OS/2 when my then-employer brought in v1.3 for LAN server purposes ('91?). I've used it on and off ever since (I like it enough that I still run v4 on one of my home machines) and my biggest complaint with it is that IBM doesn't seem to have the least bit of interest in actually marketing it. I know they still use it internally (the new CMOS box where I work runs its system console under v4), and there are still people running it, but there seems to be no effort to "sell" the product. I read an article by Jerry Pournelle a year ago or so (archived at http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/98/0514/ icbusiness2.asp) where he talked about the history of OS/2 and Windows. Repeatedly, IBM made decisions that pretty much prevented OS/2 from ever catching on.
Now, in spite of people trying to support the product and encourage its use, IBM has decided again to keep OS/2 down.
Maybe the same people at IBM who decided that the PC would never sell in the "home-use" market are the same people that are making the big decisions about OS/2....
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People have been predicting that technology has gotten out of hand since, well, renaissance times... Sure things are being invented, built and marketed faster than ever before, but that's been true since the industrial revolution started. My Grandmother relies on a fancy electronic device to monitor her blood-sugar levels (she's diabetic) and losing that capability would, at best, complicate her life. But how many people really *need* to be talking on that cell phone, or plugging that new DVD into their home theater system, or spend an hour editing and re-editing their response to a response to a Jon Katz article?
Personally, I've already taken steps to simplify my life and I've found that, while I enjoy playing stupid games on the computer, or watching TV (down to 3 hours or less a week now), or cranking up Course of Empire past 11, I can also do without.
Henry David Thoreau said, "Simplify, simplify." Of course, he took his own advice and had his laundry done and ate out a lot while staying at Walden...
I first ran across OS/2 when my then-employer brought in v1.3 for LAN server purposes ('91?). I've used it on and off ever since (I like it enough that I still run v4 on one of my home machines) and my biggest complaint with it is that IBM doesn't seem to have the least bit of interest in actually marketing it. I know they still use it internally (the new CMOS box where I work runs its system console under v4), and there are still people running it, but there seems to be no effort to "sell" the product. I read an article by Jerry Pournelle a year ago or so (archived at http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/98/0514/ icbusiness2.asp) where he talked about the history of OS/2 and Windows. Repeatedly, IBM made decisions that pretty much prevented OS/2 from ever catching on.
Now, in spite of people trying to support the product and encourage its use, IBM has decided again to keep OS/2 down.
Maybe the same people at IBM who decided that the PC would never sell in the "home-use" market are the same people that are making the big decisions about OS/2....