I love technology. But face it, technology sucks. We tolerate mediocrity. We celebrate unimpressive progress proffered by our favored team among a league of uninspiring players.
We ridicule other teams' progress as hollow manipulation of their dimwitted acolytes, observing the fleecing of dollars from those unwitting goobers in exchange for nominally improved devices released with alarming regularity.
We allow fashion to corrupt technology. Fashion is not itself bad, but it's a bad influence on technology. It allows us to comfortably tolerate progress so slow it resembles stagnation.
I am putting together a brief series on long-suffered weaknesses in technology that we now tacitly accept without question. Few even remember short-lived and seemingly prehistoric efforts to push technology forward and over these speedbumps we've come to tolerate.
In some cases, manufacturers have actively stalled advance by exploits such as
price fixing. But in most cases, progress fizzled out because many consumers are satisfied with "good enough."
Good enough is the nemesis of technology's progress. Good enough aches my brain in a deep metaphysical way. (I love hyperbole.)
But seriously, technology sucks in many ways. And I plan to rant about it.
Rants so far:
24-bit color sucks - We had better and lost it.
HD (high definition) sucks - And thankfully after years it's being replaced.
(Lossy) compression sucks - It's time to go lossless.
Boring technology - Oh, another social network. Oh, another photo-sharing app.
Portable computing sucks - It causes as much pain as it cures.
Synchronization sucks - It should not even be necessary.
User-presence awareness sucks - Too many devices demand to be the center of attention.
Directory layouts suck - The default directories created by operating systems reek of the 80s.
Case-sensitivity sucks - As if converting between case is a herculean feat.Related rants:
PAO - Personal Application Omnipresence, a theoretical computing model where applications are personal, singular, available from and adapted to all of your devices simultaneously, all while avoiding synchronization.
Chromecast is a miss - Fun toy for the price, but one that misses the full promise of push and pull views.
Microsoft's to-do list - Ideas for Microsoft to become relevant again.
I see the problem - Desktop computers fail because desktop displays fail.
Displays are the key - A renaissance in desktop computing would be at hand if displays had not been neglected.
Why tablet sales are falling - My opinion on the current downward slope of tablet sales. Short version: no one wants a plurality of first-class computers.