Whats wrong with technology?
Posted by dublindan on June 3, 2009
Today I had an interesting discussion about the problems with techology. Put simply, I was observing how we had technologies five, ten, twenty, thirty years ago which, in some ways, were more advanced than what we use now. Sure, ideas eventually trickle into the mainstream and technology advances, but its at a much slower pace than it could be. Technology is always many years ahead of the mainstream. Great technologies often get overshadowed by the mediocre and does not resurface until many many years later. Examples of this happening include the Transputer T-9000, the Intel 432, the Burroughs Large System and AmigaOS’s interoperability functions.
AmigaOS’s interoperability is an interesting example as its something I regularly wish I had. Put simply, it allowed one to automate GUI events so that you could create software by scripting multiple small tools and applications to work together towards some common function. This is exactly like unix utilities and shell scripts, except applied globally to all software, including GUI applications. This would not be too dificult to implement in current operating systems, yet it isn’t something I’ve really seen much, if anything, of on mainstream computers. In a way, AmigaOS, back in the eighties, was more advanced than the systems we have now – where interoperability between programs is concerned anyway.
There appears to be a trend where great technological ideas fade into obscurity only to have the concepts reappear in some form many many years later. This seems like a slow and inefficient way to progress technology. Why does this happen? I guess technology really can be too ahead of its time.
The real reason this happens, however, in my opinion, is business interest. A large company pushes its, often inferior, software on the masses, knowing that they will buy whatever they are told is superior, rather than what is technologically superior. Most people don’t know the area well enough to really evaluate if a piece of software does caters for their need or not anyway. If they are told it does, they are happy enough. Ignorance is bliss – they have no reason to think otherwise, even though some forgotton technology may be much better suited. Its the same in all industries however and I know that I’m one of the sheep when it comes to other products which I buy. Software is not unique.
As a market become popular, business will try to exploit the opportunity to make money so they will push their own products. If the market gains enough poularity, more and more companies enter the market and inevitably cheaper and cheaper products get pushed as an attempt to undermine the competition. This sounds great for the consumer, though sometimes it backfires and overall quality drops to accomodate the low price. This way, the more interesting and useful technologies often get left behind in favour of the cheaper, more profitable technologies.
This happens everywhere, not just computers. A friend of mine said it best. Paraphrased slightly, he stated:
Same with cars,
Same with phones,
Same with TV,
Same with Music,
Same with Games,
Same with BBS,
Same with The internet,
Same with Email,
Same with Filesharing,
Same with Planes,
Same with Spaceships
Technology becomes popular, businesses see new markets to leverage, the market becomes saturated, the lowest common denominator becomes dominant, new technology is created to get away from the lowest common denominator and the cycle repeats
There definitely seems to be some truth in this.
