Friday, June 10, 2005
The Never-Ending Dilemma of Technology
Posted by Ekkie Tepsupornchai in "THOUGHT" @ 12:00 PM
"The PC Desktop used to be a happening place. It was fun to read PC Week, PC Mag, Computer Reseller News, Infoworld and other publications that would speculate about the latest and greatest products coming to a PC near you. Not any more. Could the PC desktop be any more boring these days? Could it be any more emblematic of a mature product? <...> All the fun is happening with portable devices. Phones, Ipods, gaming consoles, PDAs, digital cameras, even hard drives and flash drives. All the good stuff is coming in small packages."
Mark Cuban, the incomparable and ever-effervescent owner of the Dallas Mavericks (he's also one of the premiere venture capitalists for leading-edge technology), runs off on a tangent of thinking that is distinctly, well, Mark Cuban-esque. He laments the days where PCs were exciting because we were always in a constant state of change, whereas now the excitement and unpredictability belongs to portable devices. I can certainly see where he's coming from when looking at my varying uses of PCs versus mobile technology.
For example, in the last 2 years since I built my most recent PC, I've swapped my PocketPC twice and my mobile phone 3 times (and on top of that, I'm eagerly awaiting to see the new WM2005 devices). Demand for improvements and innovation in PCs has subsided; the standard consumers have now accepted PCs as a part of their everyday living. On the other hand, while there's significant value-proposition to mobile technology, very few mobile devices (iPod excluded) have been met with universal acceptance. Until there's general acceptance, portable technology will be continue to be considered immature and thus, will either continue to rapidly evolve or be deemed irrelevant.
But here's where I stray from the spirit of Cuban's message. I'm not sure I prefer the continual state of innovation/improvement over the state of reliability/longevity. Don't get me wrong! Innovation is a great and necessary part of technological evolution. But as I get older, I strive more and more to use technology to simplify my life, not complicate it. While I find that rapidly developing technology is exciting, it is also very expensive, highly experimental, and requires a great deal of patience before any benefit of simplification can be obtained (if at all). What are your thoughts? Do you prefer excitement and unpredictability or dependability and maturity? Geez, I sound like an old man pleading with his daughter on her choice of boyfriends! :?
Mark Cuban, the incomparable and ever-effervescent owner of the Dallas Mavericks (he's also one of the premiere venture capitalists for leading-edge technology), runs off on a tangent of thinking that is distinctly, well, Mark Cuban-esque. He laments the days where PCs were exciting because we were always in a constant state of change, whereas now the excitement and unpredictability belongs to portable devices. I can certainly see where he's coming from when looking at my varying uses of PCs versus mobile technology.
For example, in the last 2 years since I built my most recent PC, I've swapped my PocketPC twice and my mobile phone 3 times (and on top of that, I'm eagerly awaiting to see the new WM2005 devices). Demand for improvements and innovation in PCs has subsided; the standard consumers have now accepted PCs as a part of their everyday living. On the other hand, while there's significant value-proposition to mobile technology, very few mobile devices (iPod excluded) have been met with universal acceptance. Until there's general acceptance, portable technology will be continue to be considered immature and thus, will either continue to rapidly evolve or be deemed irrelevant.
But here's where I stray from the spirit of Cuban's message. I'm not sure I prefer the continual state of innovation/improvement over the state of reliability/longevity. Don't get me wrong! Innovation is a great and necessary part of technological evolution. But as I get older, I strive more and more to use technology to simplify my life, not complicate it. While I find that rapidly developing technology is exciting, it is also very expensive, highly experimental, and requires a great deal of patience before any benefit of simplification can be obtained (if at all). What are your thoughts? Do you prefer excitement and unpredictability or dependability and maturity? Geez, I sound like an old man pleading with his daughter on her choice of boyfriends! :?
