What if our tech is good enough?

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/what-if-our-tech-is-good-enough--589169?src=rss&attr=all

by iamelgringo • 17 years ago

16 15 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

manvsmachine2• 17 years ago

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?"

10ren2• 17 years ago

With respect, the article's point is not that tech can't improve, but that those improvements aren't needed. His expression "good enough" means "good enough for a particular purpose". Sure it can be improved; but it doesn't matter because it's good enough. Consider his example of netbooks: less powerful but more demand.

You're taking improvement in technology; he's talking demand for that improvement. Sure, you can make a car that will do 200mph - and what's the market for that? How about a car that uses less fuel, has crumple zones and airbags, easier to park, looks cool, feels great to drive, accelerates well and has seats that smell like leather?

You can buy an 8 inch hard disk drive with a hugely larger capacity than a 3.5 inch one you have, and that is also cheaper per GB. But you don't buy the 8 inch one, because the smaller drives have enough capacity for your needs: they are "good enough". Because of lower fixed costs, they are also cheaper (for that capacity). And they'll fit in your laptop.

I concede that the expression "good enough" is misleading. He's using it in the sense of "The Innovators Dilemma". It's the basis of each disruptive revolution in computers, and it takes almost everyone by surprise. We keep on improving aspect X, and everyone loves it! Until one day, they stop buying it. How come? I don't know, let's just make X even better!

The idea is that people buy something based on a mix of benefits, things like features, performance, reliability, convenience, and price. Saying that one of these attributes is not "good enough", is a way of saying that "there is demand for more of it". The vendor who can supply the best improvement, in terms of the current mix of demand, wins. It's usually seen as one key benefit, and the rest are secondary. That's where the competition is focussed. And this keeps on going for years, decades. Everybody works at improving that aspect, because people demand more of it. But if it eventually saturates the demand for it, people can't use a faster car, they can't absorb more capacity: it finally is "good enough". This is another way of saying that there is now demand for more of some other attribute instead of that one. And competition shifts to that attribute.

This plays out all the time in technology markets: e.g. once it's fast enough for their needs, people prefer to buy something cheaper instead of faster. Sure, it can be faster, but that's irrelevant if no one wants it.

Fortunately, the demand doesn't usually disappear, but switches to somewhere else, so there is still demand for tech improvements - just different ones.

Confusion• 17 years ago

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.

swombat• 17 years ago

It may well happen that some day, technological development stalls and no one needs anything anymore from technology.

However, that day will be the day when no one on Earth has any problems anymore, because technology is used to solve problems. That may happen if we destroy ourselves, or if we reach a peak of technological achievement such that we are effectively gods.

I hope the former won't happen in my lifetime, and I suspect we'll have to wait a while for the latter.

manvsmachine2• 17 years ago

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.

pkulak• 17 years ago

<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.

robryan• 17 years ago

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.

david927• 17 years ago

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

bonsaitree• 17 years ago

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".

10ren2• 17 years ago

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.

banned_man• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

What if our tech is good enough?

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