Drivehard.net

They say if we live to 75 we will have spent about 25 years asleep. Sounds like a foolish waste of time to me. For my generation, I think the accumulated time watching progress bars will surpass our time asleep. They”re never fast enough are they? Moore has been proven right, yet our computers are never fast enough.

New Sony commercial on TV…”Can a better computer improve your life? Yes, it can.” Propaganda is an evil thing.

Opening the dh dictionary we find the definition for ”consumerizing technology”: the point at which a given technology is released to the inept masses. A little over two decades ago a toaster was the most complex piece of technology in the common household. It was simple. It had a few resistors, several springs, and very rarely broke. Now, my mothers microwave radiates food to the right temperature with the aid of a touch pad of two dozen buttons, a cpu, an lcd display, and a few thousand transistors. So what’s the problem you ask? With the increase in complexity of a system, immediately follows an increased rate of miscommunication and component failure. Try selling that line to the 40 year old person who just dropped 2 grand on a new computer that was DOA.”But my SE has run for 15 years with out any problems!”

I suppose capitalism is ultimately responsible for pushing the latest technology into mass markets of people who simply don’t understand how truly complex they are. The technology is supposed to be transparent say some. Hide the computer in the pretty box, the user will never have to know what”s inside. Well, that part has worked, most people are lucky if they can even find the box. The quest of protecting the user from the technology is an admirable one. One that I believe in, to a point. It takes a high level of technological refinement to achieve that lofty goal. It must be tested and proved durable before released, and I still believe an amount of education is the best way to give the user a satisfying experience. While some products usually come close, the personal computer is unfortuneatly decades from that point. Digital camera GUIs are a joke. MP3 player navigation has managed to bewilder even me, save one. The computer in my car tells me when she”s sick, but without the help of another computer and a key to the error codes she”s parked. And my Mother has barely scratched the surface of everything her auto detergent suspensing clothes washer can do.

What am I talking about here? Job security for the lucky few. Yes, I”m a proud card carrying member of the service industry racquet. So is the guy at the Chevy deal who took 450 of my dollars to replace an O2 sensor in my car this week. An experience my grandfather never had with his ’48 Ford. You see, he grew up with that new technology and learned how to fix it as he went along, acting as his own mechanic. Yet by the time his children started driving the technology was hidden, inaccessible to the average person…they needed a mechanic. Someone with training who would be paid well for their knowledge and skill. They took the car in when ”something was broken” and when they got it back, it just worked, with little or no understanding of what was done to fix it. I’m a mechanic. I fix the ”something” when it’s broken and try and hide it from everyone else.

This is a plasma display in a hallway at a local mall that shows ads for near by stores. It’s had a Windows fault-error now for 4 days. Sometimes you just can’t hide it.