
What if our tech is good enough? - iamelgringo
http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/what-if-our-tech-is-good-enough--589169?src=rss&attr=all
======
ryanwaggoner
_Yet now we find ourselves in an impossible position. In almost every sphere,
the technology we have is so good that any improvements can only be
incremental._

I don't believe this for a second. I'm sure people said the same thing about
smartphones before the iPhone. Yes, some categories of technology are mature,
but innovation is also about the creation of entirely new categories that we
can't currently foresee.

~~~
donaq
I agree. I can recall a time when I thought I would never need a hard disk
bigger than 20GB and went "meh" when 40GB hard disks came out.

 _upgrading from an iPod that stores your entire music collection to one that
can store your collection twice is nowhere near as exciting._

It is, because my collection is now twice as large.

~~~
electromagnetic
I got one of the 40GB and did the exact same when the 80GB came out.

I personally don't store that much music, but I love video. So it now
completely sucks that I can't store much video on it, certainly not enough for
me not to spend an hour every week changing up the videos.

I guess it says something when my 500GB external hard drive isn't big enough
anymore. My next computer purchase is going to be a 4 bay NAS, then I can
upgrade it 1TB at a time.

------
manvsmachine
The premise of this article indicated a massive lack of research or
forethought. The author is absolutely confusing "what exists" with "what is
readily made commercially available to the public". A few hours of browsing
tech blogs would make it very clear how many significant advances are made. He
talks about Blu-Ray like it's cutting edge. Meanwhile we have companies
putting out 3D TV sets _this year_. Digital cameras really can't get any
better? Last time I checked, there still aren't any small, inexpensive
consumer 3D data acquisition devices yet. And the jump from dial-up to
broadband is no bigger than the jump from our anemic 6-8MB connections to the
1GB/s service that Korea is building out as we speak.

The title of this should really be, "Why don't people realize that our tech
still sucks?"

~~~
Confusion
However, you are confusing 'what will become available' with 'what consumers
will buy when it becomes available'. The author doesn't say nothing 'better'
will become available. He is claiming that consumers may not buy it, because
the advantage of the new product over the old one is minimal. He is, in
effect, claiming that many more current R&D efforts will, in the near future,
turn out to be bad investments.

When purchasing a new product, the perceived advantage is always weighed
against its additional cost, having to let go of something one 'is familiar
with', backward compatability with other possessions that are retained, etc.
If the manufacturer does not succeed in convincing consumers that there is
something to be gained by 'upgrading', they will not upgrade.

Now I concede that, at the moment, you are probably right: lots of new and
improved technologies that will hit the markets the next ten years will be
perceived as having sufficient advantage (to replace currently owned products)
and they will be purchased.

However, in the long run, I think there must come a point when the author's
argument will turn out to be valid. That's when new technologies just do not
offer enough advantage to be profitable in the consumer market. Of course,
every technology faces this problem at some point: it reaches a stable end-of-
life fase and manufacturers deal with it in various ways. Some old types of
CPU, radio's and the lightbulb are interesting case studies. The main question
is whether there will come a point when this holds for the majority of
technological innovations, in such a way that the consumer market for 'new'
products vanishes all across the 'technological' consumer product market.

~~~
manvsmachine
Point taken; however, if that is the argument that he is trying to make, it is
not made very clearly and the title is misleading. There is a subtle but very
distinct difference between "What is out is not significantly better" and
"What is out _is_ significantly better but not cheap/prevalent/simple enough
for me to buy it". Because, yes, what exists now is more than good enough for
people who don't particularly like or use tech. Yes, some people still use
Win95, but to say that Win 7 is the same thing with "a few shiny baubles" is
laughable.

As far as long-term effects are concerned, there may be a time when we decide
that there's not much left to do, but I'm willing to bet that it's not anytime
even _remotely_ soon. A lot of people have been impressed or overwhelmed by
the things we achieved during the 90's and 00's; their kids won't be. Looking
at some of the areas from <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569103>, you
can see how far we have yet to go.

------
10ren
The death of the PC was claimed in a video presentation from 2000 or 2001. I
can't find it online - anyone know the one I mean?

I found the argument fascinating: he claimed that the dramatic growth of the
computing industry was fueled by more people having access to computers.
Beginning with mainframes, through to minicomputers, workstations and PCs,
each wave was cheaper and was affordable to a much larger number of people.
This increasingly larger audience is what fueled the growth. But such growth
can't continue forever; eventually everyone has one. At that point, they still
buy upgrades and replacements, but the dramatic rate of sales must drop back.

I think that's where the first world is today, and developing nations aren't
that far behind. Of course, we'll still have new devices (iPhones, kindles,
and others-yet-to-be-invented), but the _computing industry as such_ won't
grow at the unsustainably dramatic rates of previous decades.

------
bonsaitree
The author of the article is confusing technology advancement with "consumer
product demand" under an economic recession.

Aside from slowing of initial productivity gains in the broad application of
commoditized digital mathematics (i.e. computers) to human endeavors,
technology growth is actually accelerating in many areas including: biology,
materials science, pure mathematics (algorithms are actually a technology),
metrology (think 'Large Hadron Collider'), and tribology (lubrication, and
friction).

The wrongly attributed "640k is all anyone will ever need" quote comes to
mind. What a horrid piece of "jurinalism".

------
robryan
Even if it is good enough, the perception of what is good enough is constantly
changing. At a point in the past the steam engine was probably considered good
enough.

I think it would be a dangerous thing for the technology industry to fall into
the trap of thinking what we have is good enough and killing innovation. Even
if the product is good enough there has to be a driving force to constantly
improve.

There is lots of possibility for computing that just isn't attainable with
current machines. Things that probably weren't even thought of when we were
back a stage from where we are now.

------
pkulak
<i>Moving from video to DVD-quality camcorders was another giant leap, but the
difference between 720p HD and 1080p HD is only apparent if your TV is the
size of a bus.</i>

That's a bit misleading. There was never any transition from 720p to 1080p.

------
david927
The sweet thing is that it's only getting started.

------
banned_man
This has more to do with misinvestment of resources than any fundamental
ceiling to demand for better technology. Scaling up existing capabilities to
be slightly better reaches a limit at some point; increasing capabilities does
not.

Consider games for an example of poorly invested resources. The graphics have
improved dramatically in video games between the era of Chrono Trigger ('95)
and now. The quality of the games has declined. These two trends are linked
together. Now that the budget for a game is in the 7- and 8-digit range,
business people have creative control over games, and games are more likely to
be designed by committee. Thus, they end up sucking. Improving the graphics
will not solve this problem, but there's still demand for high-quality games
that is not being met through traditional channels.

~~~
EvilTrout
I think people tend to look at the SNES days with rose coloured glasses. There
were plenty of crap games available then, too.

Remember when every game was trying to push an adorable cartoon mascot? Do you
think the business people weren't behind that too?

While good graphics are certainly no substitute for good gameplay, there are
certainly far more AAA titles available now than there ever has been.

Some come from large studios: Left for Dead, Bioshock, Fallout. Others are
coming from the emerging indie scene like World of Goo and Braid.

