Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says forward this
Speaker 1: message onto everybody. I'm Jonathan Stricklin and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: So hey you too. Hey. You know how in the
Speaker 1: past we've done some episodes of this podcast called you
Speaker 1: don't see That in sci Fi? I vaguely recall that
Speaker 1: we did such podcast. Well, I think we should do
Speaker 1: another one today. Well, I agree, because that's what we
Speaker 1: have notes on. This isn't perceptive, this isn't the future
Speaker 1: of ants. Did we already do aunts? Oh no, oh no,
Speaker 1: I think I just copied my notes from last time.
Speaker 1: I don't worry, I'll catch up. I'll catch up. Okay,
Speaker 1: you don't see that in sci Fi? As a little
Speaker 1: sub series we do within Forward Thinking, where we take
Speaker 1: something that you often see in science fiction and say,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's what the future is really
Speaker 1: going to look like, or something you rarely see in
Speaker 1: science fiction, or at least don't see as much as
Speaker 1: we think you should, and say, well, why don't they
Speaker 1: have more of that? Right? It's kind of like looking
Speaker 1: back at say, the nineteen fifties and reading the descriptions
Speaker 1: of what they thought the year two thousand was going
Speaker 1: to be like, and then thinking, boy, were they off,
Speaker 1: you know, and then thinking, wait a minute, are current
Speaker 1: visions of the future when depicted in science fiction films
Speaker 1: could be just as misguided, right, And sometimes that can
Speaker 1: be for really fun purposes, like the fact that explosions
Speaker 1: are pretty or Jehovivic is pretty, Etcetera. Exploding in space
Speaker 1: makes a noise? Is that how you pronounce it Jehovavitch? Sure?
Speaker 1: Probably not? Oh no, no, let's keep it whatever it is,
Speaker 1: Mila Mia right now, Mila, I have no idea anyway,
Speaker 1: Let's continue. She'll him up again later in the episode.
Speaker 1: In the asked, we've talked about stuff like how come
Speaker 1: when people speak English five d or a thousand years
Speaker 1: in the future, they sound just like people today, Because
Speaker 1: if you didn't have them sound like people today, people
Speaker 1: today wouldn't be able to understand your science fiction movie. Joe.
Speaker 1: That's an excellent point, Jonathan. Okay, well today we want
Speaker 1: to talk about consumer technology. So how many pieces of
Speaker 1: consumer technology do you have within reach? Don't ask me
Speaker 1: that question. Joe, it's embarrassing. Well, it's probably a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of If you're listening to this podcast, I
Speaker 1: imagine you were listening to the podcast on a piece
Speaker 1: of consumer technology, unless it's just wafting through the air,
Speaker 1: or a friend listen to it, memorize all the parts
Speaker 1: and is now performing that podcast for you, In which
Speaker 1: case call us because that sounds fascinating. I want to
Speaker 1: meet your friend. Yeah, But I want to ask you
Speaker 1: all a question. So, when you look into a science
Speaker 1: fiction movie or science fiction book, how is consumer technology
Speaker 1: like computers and how blitz handheld devices, phones, things like that,
Speaker 1: How does it seem in those pieces of media. Well, first,
Speaker 1: let's let's be specific. We're talking about kind of that
Speaker 1: idealistic version of the future, not the post apocalyptic Mad
Speaker 1: Max version right right now where everything's wrecked and burned. Sure,
Speaker 1: but there's no real consumer technology in Matt Max. I
Speaker 1: mean consumer salvage. Yea, it's consumer salvage enough. In futures
Speaker 1: wherein there are giant corporations that are hypothetically selling these
Speaker 1: kinds of things, it's usually so sleek and so well,
Speaker 1: I mean whatever our current definition of the word sleek is, right, well, yeah, here,
Speaker 1: here's what I'd say. It's typically sleek, fast, responsive, immersive.
Speaker 1: It can anticipate what you want, it's easy to use.
Speaker 1: The characters are invariably very comfortable using it. Displays are
Speaker 1: really gorgeous. Yes, it's like the technology becomes an extension
Speaker 1: of the characters. Right, There's there's never that moment where
Speaker 1: a character picks up that floating that floating display that
Speaker 1: doesn't appear to be made of anything, and they're about
Speaker 1: to zoom in on something and sudding, they get a
Speaker 1: blue screen of death that never happens. Right, That were
Speaker 1: you're getting at flash player has crashed. Yeah, right, do
Speaker 1: you want to continue this application? Right? You just get
Speaker 1: a bunch of pop ups, like can you imagine Minority
Speaker 1: Report with just endless pop ups? Minority Report is a
Speaker 1: great one because it's a great example that people often
Speaker 1: refer to when they're they're talking about what movies have
Speaker 1: really good, probably very realistic, and interesting depictions of consumer
Speaker 1: technology in the future. Minority Report is one of the
Speaker 1: most often cited, and they actually did good research going
Speaker 1: into that film. They they consulted with lots of people
Speaker 1: in the tech industry. Well, if you see the interface
Speaker 1: that Tom Cruise's character interacts with in Minority Report, where
Speaker 1: he's got his hands up in the air and the
Speaker 1: displays are all floating around and he can swipe stuff
Speaker 1: off the screen. I mean, you can see the user
Speaker 1: interfaces and touch screen devices that obviously take inspiration from
Speaker 1: that same basic UI design, right, whether it was from
Speaker 1: Minority Report or the information that informed the writers and
Speaker 1: designers of Minority Report to make sure that it had
Speaker 1: that feel, it's very much a UI that we're familiar
Speaker 1: with today. It may not mean that we've got displays
Speaker 1: bloating up everywhere, but that same sort of swiping to
Speaker 1: to get things off of a screen, or pinching or
Speaker 1: or moving your fingers apart to zoom in or zoom out,
Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff is commonplace now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another good example would be Star Trek. Now to us today,
Speaker 1: if we watch old episodes of Star Trek, a lot
Speaker 1: of the technology might look extremely dated, but it's still
Speaker 1: within the universe depicting this kind of very fast, sleek,
Speaker 1: very easy to use, comfortable. Uh, it's totally. It works
Speaker 1: all the time, unless there's a plot point in which
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, or if you're on the Holidack, in
Speaker 1: which it never works. Right, Right, there's there's a there's
Speaker 1: probably a seventy thirty chance that if you're on the holideck,
Speaker 1: something's about to go down and the holidack is going
Speaker 1: to try and kill you. Uh. The the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about Star Trek is that, again, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: unless it's a plot point, the technology just works. And
Speaker 1: not only does it just work, but if you ever
Speaker 1: pay really close attention, it doesn't make any sense how
Speaker 1: how well it works. Because the actors, when they were
Speaker 1: not delivering a line, might be staring intently at a
Speaker 1: panel and then pushing buttons like a like a crazy person.
Speaker 1: Like they'll be like twenty or thirty button presses to
Speaker 1: do whatever task that that person is imagining they are
Speaker 1: doing at that time. But then when you see a
Speaker 1: character actually have to do a task, often it will
Speaker 1: involve like a single button press. And then you pull
Speaker 1: up all of the works of Charles Dickens. Do you think,
Speaker 1: why does that panel have a Charles Dickens button? They
Speaker 1: went to the Charles Dickens annel. Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you're Patrick Stewart, you gotta have the
Speaker 1: complete words of Charles. I mean, I'm sure he has
Speaker 1: all English literature defined to specific buttons, hot button keys
Speaker 1: on the bridge of the enterprosem. He's got to print
Speaker 1: out a new copy every time he spills t exactly.
Speaker 1: It's just Charles Dickens. Yeah. You also put a note
Speaker 1: about Wally. I thought that was a great example. Now
Speaker 1: obviously not the Junkyard of Earth, but this spaceship out
Speaker 1: in space, Ferry Apple inspired spaceship out there where where
Speaker 1: technology has reached the point where it's catering to every
Speaker 1: single need, so that humans are essentially subservient to the technology,
Speaker 1: not not in a a overlord kind of way, but
Speaker 1: in a like but not. They don't realize that they
Speaker 1: have willingly given up that agency. I think. I think
Speaker 1: we're debating the plot of Wally, but seriously, those care
Speaker 1: moral of this podcast. If you don't realize it's tyranny,
Speaker 1: it's not, but it's they've they've given up their age
Speaker 1: and willing. They're not. They're not, and it was terrible
Speaker 1: for all of them at the end. Trichy is a
Speaker 1: word that you use when you realize how badly off
Speaker 1: you are. They don't point like a benevolent dictator, Well,
Speaker 1: I want to transition to talking about why we think
Speaker 1: the future of technology might not necessarily look like that,
Speaker 1: where all pieces of consumer tech are very fast, sleek, sexy,
Speaker 1: and perfect, where a lot of the frustrations we have
Speaker 1: with technology today you might very well continue to see
Speaker 1: even in the future, far down the line of technological development.
Speaker 1: So one of the first things I think we should
Speaker 1: talk about is this concept in computing performance known as
Speaker 1: Pages law right and Pages law is kind of an
Speaker 1: inverse of Moore's law. Moore's law being the idea that
Speaker 1: that the number of transistors that engineers can cram onto
Speaker 1: an integrated circuit is going to double at a steady rate,
Speaker 1: like every year and a half or so, right and
Speaker 1: by now we kind of suggest that that means the
Speaker 1: processing power itself doubles at that rate, because it may
Speaker 1: not be an actual doubling of the transistors every eighteen
Speaker 1: months these days, but engineers are finding better and better
Speaker 1: ways to create architecture so that the processing power in
Speaker 1: effect doubles every eighteen months or so, the practical effect
Speaker 1: being that your computer hardware, your new computer hardware, is
Speaker 1: faster every eighteen months twice as twice as fast as
Speaker 1: the as the hardware that existed eighteen months previously. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, the user experience is not determined solely by
Speaker 1: what the hardware can do, because the hardware has to
Speaker 1: run software. That's where they get you exactly. That is
Speaker 1: where they get you. So at a Google Developer conference
Speaker 1: in San Francisco in two thousand nine, the Google executive
Speaker 1: Sergey Brin coined the term Pages law, which is sort
Speaker 1: of the inverse of Moore's law, and it's also been
Speaker 1: referred to as Worth's law. Worth with NYE. Worth. Actually
Speaker 1: the terminology their predates pages law, but pages law is
Speaker 1: essentially a synonym, and it was a popularization for it,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a little bit of a
Speaker 1: joke the way that it was presented at this conference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the idea is, every eighteen months software becomes twice
Speaker 1: as slow. So as your hardware becomes twice as fast,
Speaker 1: the software you run on it takes twice as long
Speaker 1: to run. I assume this was a dig at Larry Page,
Speaker 1: the co founder of Google. I'm sure it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: some harmless jest. This law is obviously kind of a
Speaker 1: humorous it's it's not like a universal law. Right, we're
Speaker 1: not talking about the laws of thermodynamics, just like Moore's
Speaker 1: law is not a universal law. Right. We had a
Speaker 1: whole other episode about a month or so ago, I believe,
Speaker 1: wherein we talked about some of the problems that Moore's
Speaker 1: law is currently running into with the development of or
Speaker 1: with the physical transistors as we know them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Moore's law is not a law of physics.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a prediction that has turned out to
Speaker 1: be very accurate so far, if even self fulfilling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: perhaps self fulfilling, right, because if you set out a
Speaker 1: sort of goal post for the industry, they might just
Speaker 1: work hard enough to go through it. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be an engineer working when you realize you cannot
Speaker 1: meet the goal of making a processor that's twice as
Speaker 1: powerful within eighteen months. And say I was there when
Speaker 1: Moore's law ended, Probably don't want to be that. You
Speaker 1: want to be like, no, no, when I was when
Speaker 1: I was on I watched UM But but no. I
Speaker 1: think that we've all had this common experience of software
Speaker 1: bloat and and and this happens for a couple of reasons. Sure,
Speaker 1: feature creep is one thing so when when computers become
Speaker 1: more powerful, programmers want to take advantage of that power,
Speaker 1: and so they cram more and more features into a
Speaker 1: piece of software. Features in air quotes because they might
Speaker 1: not even necessarily be things that you really want this
Speaker 1: program to do, but but sometimes they can be very
Speaker 1: helpful and or or pretty well and a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of programmers may be working on software that
Speaker 1: they have these gray ideas for what the software can do.
Speaker 1: The problem is that the the hardware as it exists now,
Speaker 1: the state of the art hardware that your average consumer
Speaker 1: is going to have access to, would not be able
Speaker 1: to support that kind of software. But software development takes
Speaker 1: a lot of time. Sometimes a cycle to develop a
Speaker 1: single program may take long enough so that by the
Speaker 1: time the software is done, there's actually hardware strong enough
Speaker 1: to use it. Now to the end user, it just
Speaker 1: seems like the brand new computer is running whatever new
Speaker 1: version of the program you have at the same rate
Speaker 1: that your old computer was running the old version of
Speaker 1: the program, because in fact, the software was developed to
Speaker 1: take advantage of all that horse power, or that you
Speaker 1: might even need to buy a new computer in order
Speaker 1: to run the software that you really want like the
Speaker 1: number of times that I know when I used to
Speaker 1: do some PC gaming, frequently things would come out that
Speaker 1: we're just a little bit better than what hardware I had,
Speaker 1: and so I had to swap out different bits if
Speaker 1: I wanted to play whatever it was, right, right, you
Speaker 1: might need to go out and get a new graphics
Speaker 1: card so that you can run that new version of
Speaker 1: A half Life three. Hey, did you guys hear about
Speaker 1: halfway three? Me? Neither, because they haven't announced it. That's
Speaker 1: sick ber Yeah, I guess. So I have a feeling.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling. I'm not the first and I
Speaker 1: certainly won't be the last. But it's related to Pages
Speaker 1: law or Worth's law. As a there are a couple
Speaker 1: of other similar, kind of humorous concepts, and again these
Speaker 1: were kind of meant as tongue in cheek a way
Speaker 1: of explaining human behavior, and it doesn't necessarily relate just
Speaker 1: to electronics, but it can also relate to that. One
Speaker 1: of those is Parkinson's Law, which is created by C.
Speaker 1: Northcote Parkinson h that says that we're will expand so
Speaker 1: as to fill the time available for its completion. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you could have the exact same task
Speaker 1: and tell one person that you need to get this
Speaker 1: done in an hour, and tell another person that you
Speaker 1: have six hours to do this, and the amount of
Speaker 1: work that task is going to take will expand to
Speaker 1: fill that six hour period for that second person, whereas
Speaker 1: the first person will be able to complete in an hour. Um.
Speaker 1: This is just one of those things kind of explain
Speaker 1: human behavior, not so much a universal law. Again, same
Speaker 1: sort of thing also can come true in the world
Speaker 1: of consumer electronics in a way, it's it's a little
Speaker 1: bit more of an abstract. There's also the Parkinson's law
Speaker 1: of triviality, which can go into software design. The law
Speaker 1: of triviality states that if you ever get a group
Speaker 1: of people together to discuss an important uh idea important task,
Speaker 1: something along those lines, invariably that group of people will
Speaker 1: spend the most amount of time on the least important
Speaker 1: aspect of whatever that happens to be. Same sort of
Speaker 1: thing can happen with software blow, where you'll see people
Speaker 1: really focus on things that ultimately may not matter. In fact,
Speaker 1: it may be something that just a tiny slice of
Speaker 1: the consumers ever even come to contact with. Those animations
Speaker 1: of Clippy are so smooth. That's wonderful, exactly the what
Speaker 1: I was thinking in my mind while I was saying that. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the rest of it's not right. I think Clippy is
Speaker 1: coming back. That's prediction I'm waiting for, Like Microsoft Bob
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, that will be I'll be exciting. Okay, Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: It's true that things like Pages law or Worth's law
Speaker 1: or Parkinson's laws, these things are not hard and fast
Speaker 1: rules of reality, but they are observations that we laugh
Speaker 1: at because they seem to ring very true to us.
Speaker 1: Like this is a very accurate way of describing the
Speaker 1: state of technology today, and so it doesn't necessarily hold
Speaker 1: the future to technology will always follow the path of
Speaker 1: software bloat. But I can see more reason to believe
Speaker 1: that it will than reason to believe that it won't,
Speaker 1: because it's been this way so far, and something would
Speaker 1: have to change for it to really overcome this. And
Speaker 1: it's being made by people, right, And these are observations
Speaker 1: ultimately about people, not about the technology. The technology itself
Speaker 1: is completely separate from this. This is really about our
Speaker 1: behaviors as a species, right, right, that the users and
Speaker 1: the programmers of Yeah, the stuff I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: not likely to change now. Well, even if you get
Speaker 1: to a point where you say, what if we reach
Speaker 1: a future where machines are making our gadgets for us,
Speaker 1: like we're no longer making them ourselves, but a machine
Speaker 1: is designing them. Well, someone made that machine, So you know,
Speaker 1: it may be that there might be several generations down
Speaker 1: that pathway where you get to a point where the
Speaker 1: things that are designed really are perfectly designed for a
Speaker 1: human being to perfectly optimize what they're doing. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that's so that's a completely natural, seamless integration in our
Speaker 1: lives to the point where we never have that awkward
Speaker 1: moment where you know, something just doesn't make sense to us,
Speaker 1: or we have that issue with whatever gadget we're trying
Speaker 1: to make work. Yeah. So what I'm saying in this
Speaker 1: point of the conversation is that even though even if
Speaker 1: we don't posit, say the end of Moore's law or
Speaker 1: something like that, and we say that computers and devices
Speaker 1: continue to get more and more powerful, I still think
Speaker 1: in Minority Report, we should be seeing Tom Cruise getting
Speaker 1: frustrated with memory problems on his big swipy, sexy sleek
Speaker 1: screens and there should be things that crash and fail
Speaker 1: to load. Right, he should pull he should pull up
Speaker 1: a window. Realized, dang it, I I was looking at
Speaker 1: Amazon earlier because I needed new shoes, and this is
Speaker 1: the Amazon thing. This is totally not that. That file
Speaker 1: about that that person who is up out to commit murder. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: but even even let's suppose that the technology is perfect, um,
Speaker 1: will all of us be comfortable with it? That is
Speaker 1: a great point. That's sort of the compliment to the
Speaker 1: point we were just talking about, because yeah, you can
Speaker 1: look at one of the most easy to use, beautiful
Speaker 1: pieces of technology ever made, and some people will still
Speaker 1: have a lot of trouble figuring out how to use it.
Speaker 1: They're just not comfortable with the new tech. That's sort
Speaker 1: of a fundamental feature of human nature is that it's
Speaker 1: hard to adapt to new things. Are you Are you
Speaker 1: talking about old people? No, I am not talking. I'm
Speaker 1: the oldest person in this room. I'm getting a little
Speaker 1: sensitive here. I'm not talking. No, it doesn't. In fact,
Speaker 1: though I don't know. Age maybe correlated with this issue.
Speaker 1: We may talk about that in a minute. But you
Speaker 1: can be anybody and have trouble adapting to interfaces that
Speaker 1: you're not used to using. I think one thing that
Speaker 1: we should see more in science fiction is people being
Speaker 1: less at home with their consumer technology that I can't
Speaker 1: think of a film that's not satirical in nature where
Speaker 1: people are just really flustered and frustrated by not knowing
Speaker 1: how to work their different interfaces. Well, I think I
Speaker 1: think the reason for that ends up being dramatic rather
Speaker 1: than anything else. It's it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: it would distract from the story. Therefore it's not a component.
Speaker 1: Whereas we would say, well, it's not really realistic. I mean,
Speaker 1: your average person would probably have, especially getting something new
Speaker 1: out of the box, brand new thing, would probably have
Speaker 1: one of those moments where you know, you toss the
Speaker 1: instructions away because you don't need those. But but but
Speaker 1: it would have been much more realistic, is all. I
Speaker 1: think we're saying to have Tom Cruse have just one
Speaker 1: single moment where he went, what's that button? Well, you know, well, certainly,
Speaker 1: I mean, and the point of all the the storytelling
Speaker 1: may not be to go for realism. I understand that totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, it might be the same reason you don't
Speaker 1: see characters going to the bathroom and movies that it's
Speaker 1: just not interesting to the dramatic storyline. And and as
Speaker 1: we've talked about in uh several of these episodes before,
Speaker 1: I I accept that point of view, as I just
Speaker 1: think it's worth pointing out. So let's talk about how
Speaker 1: people become acclimatized to new technology and how quickly they
Speaker 1: adopt it and become comfortable with it. Sure, and okay,
Speaker 1: part of it may in fact be generational. There there
Speaker 1: has been some research get off my lawn. There's been
Speaker 1: some research out of the Pew Center, which does pretty
Speaker 1: good research about the Internet and technology, UM, indicating the
Speaker 1: tech is changing fast enough these days that it's actually
Speaker 1: speeding up generational differences and making smaller age demographics comfortable
Speaker 1: with smaller segments of tech. Uh and UM. There is
Speaker 1: an interesting paper kind of to this point by one
Speaker 1: doctor Larry D. Rosin, published in the National Psychologist in
Speaker 1: two thousand four. It was called Understanding the Technological Generation Gap,
Speaker 1: and it pointed out the time frames of previous technological eras,
Speaker 1: which I thought was really interesting, like the agricultural era,
Speaker 1: which lasted for some three thousand years, or the industrial era,
Speaker 1: which lasted some three hundred or the digital age or
Speaker 1: information age, or whatever it is that you want to
Speaker 1: call it, which has been going on for for a
Speaker 1: mere fraction of that, like thirty to fifty years, but
Speaker 1: has changed intrinsically the ways that most human people interact
Speaker 1: with the world. He generally suggests that we're all adapting
Speaker 1: more rapidly these days, but that as as generations grow
Speaker 1: up experiencing such rapid technological evolution, they're going to be
Speaker 1: able to adapt ever faster. What's interesting is that this
Speaker 1: also kind of uh plays into the idea of the singularity,
Speaker 1: this idea that we're having these ages of of of
Speaker 1: technology and they are transitioning ever more rapidly. Now. Of course,
Speaker 1: in the concept of the singularity, you in our an
Speaker 1: age where change is the definition of that era. There's
Speaker 1: no consistency from one moment to the next. Whether that
Speaker 1: ever happens, well, we've done some episodes about it, so
Speaker 1: we don't need to go into it here. Uh and
Speaker 1: and other research kind of does disagree with with the
Speaker 1: concept that we're building towards sub kind of weird superhuman
Speaker 1: generation like that. There was a critical review of the
Speaker 1: literature that was published in the British Journal of Education
Speaker 1: Technology in two thousand and eight called the digital natives bait,
Speaker 1: and it indicated that the differences aren't so much a
Speaker 1: generationally informed as they are socioeconomically informed, which, of course
Speaker 1: is is the money and social structure kind of sides
Speaker 1: of this. And the others even went so far as
Speaker 1: to compare the the idea that digital natives, these people
Speaker 1: who have grown up with tech being intrinsically different, to
Speaker 1: a kind of moral panic, like like similar to the
Speaker 1: kind of thinking a couple of generations ago that Elvis
Speaker 1: was going to literally ruined civilization as we knew it
Speaker 1: with his wiggly pelvis. Did you know that pelvis rhymes
Speaker 1: with Elvis? I did. Greece made pretty pretty good use
Speaker 1: of that fact, I recall. But I can definitely see
Speaker 1: what you're saying there about the the moral panic idea
Speaker 1: that people are very concerned about the digital native generation. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean partially because they're their own children and they
Speaker 1: don't understand what's going on with them. Yeah, Well, they
Speaker 1: see like, oh man, my kid knows how to use
Speaker 1: this technology that I don't know how to use, and
Speaker 1: it makes me uncomfortable. Probably means it's bad. Well, it's
Speaker 1: also it's also interesting in that there have been plenty
Speaker 1: of studies that have shown that that kids growing up
Speaker 1: with this technology don't necessarily know how to use it,
Speaker 1: at least not effectively. They may be able to access
Speaker 1: the things they want to access very very quickly, but
Speaker 1: when it comes to making any use of it beyond
Speaker 1: that that scope, the scope in which they have become accustomed,
Speaker 1: like social changing, yeah, well, or to get into angry
Speaker 1: birds or whatever, right exactly, whatever that might be, whether
Speaker 1: it's to to end up going on call of duty
Speaker 1: or to uh send out a message on whatever social
Speaker 1: network kids are actually on these days, I don't know
Speaker 1: if they even do that anymore. Um, get off my lawn.
Speaker 1: But I mean, no matter what it is like, when
Speaker 1: it comes down to using this amazing tool for something
Speaker 1: along the lines of research, uh, they are not necessarily
Speaker 1: shown to be more gifted than people who were born
Speaker 1: before the Internet became you know, a household kind of
Speaker 1: of thing, at least in the United States at any rate.
Speaker 1: So Uh, for example, when I was in school, it
Speaker 1: was before the Internet was something that was accessible to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were research institutions that were on our
Speaker 1: pannette and then the early Internet when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have access to it until I was
Speaker 1: in college. Uh So I ended up adapting to that.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that my research skills that I
Speaker 1: developed over time as I learned them, um, are not
Speaker 1: you know. It's not like the kids who were born
Speaker 1: in that era were suddenly on my same level just
Speaker 1: by nature of the fact that they were born when
Speaker 1: it happened. They have to develop the skills too. So
Speaker 1: that's another thing just to keep in mind, is that
Speaker 1: even if we get into a future, another argument to
Speaker 1: support why consumer technology is never going to be this
Speaker 1: incredibly seamless experience, we still have to learn how to
Speaker 1: use it. Until we get to a point where the
Speaker 1: technology is learning how to react to us. Then they're
Speaker 1: still going to be a learning curve, which means they're
Speaker 1: still going to be times when you do have that
Speaker 1: frustrating moment where you're trying to make the replicator actually
Speaker 1: make your earl gray t well. A lot, a lot
Speaker 1: can go into those learning curves. It's not just an
Speaker 1: issue of a particular humans capacity to pick up a
Speaker 1: thing and understand it. It's it's also a societal and
Speaker 1: an infrastructural problem. And and I have a rather lengthy,
Speaker 1: but I think worthwhile example to talk to you guys
Speaker 1: about about telephones. Okay, Um, it took a long time
Speaker 1: for them to become truly pervasive within our culture, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so these days we dial phone numbers using a numerical
Speaker 1: keypad or a digital represented representation of one more likely.
Speaker 1: But those keypads only debuted in the nineteen sixties. Before that,
Speaker 1: it was all rotary phones, which seemed hopelessly outdated these days.
Speaker 1: But we're new as of the nineteen twenties, whereupon phone
Speaker 1: companies had to hold public demonstrations for an entire decade
Speaker 1: to explain how these things worked, because before then, operators
Speaker 1: had handled all of the dialing. You would you would
Speaker 1: pick up the phone, talk to an operator and say, hey,
Speaker 1: connect me to this thing, and they would figure out
Speaker 1: how to do it. You never had to dial a
Speaker 1: phone previous to the actually like in those old TV
Speaker 1: shows where they just pick up the phone and say, hey,
Speaker 1: give me you know ethel yeah, right exactly. But but
Speaker 1: even even when those non dial phones debuted back in
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, it took like forty years where the
Speaker 1: tech caught on enough that companies could stop publishing really
Speaker 1: basic telephone instruction manuals. At one from CIRCA recommended that
Speaker 1: you and I quote speak directly into the mouthpiece, keeping
Speaker 1: mustache out of the opening. I think that's still a
Speaker 1: valuable piece of information. It is for most of us.
Speaker 1: Know that it was written specifically for Teddy Roosevelt. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: And let's let's look at this in a more quantitative light,
Speaker 1: because I know that all of that probably sounds a
Speaker 1: little bit circumstantial. So so, in terms of phone adoption
Speaker 1: by the general populace, in eighteen seventy seven, Belt Telephone
Speaker 1: Company had seven and seventy telephones in existence. By eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine, twenty years later, they had a million telephones.
Speaker 1: That's that's one percent of the population of the United
Speaker 1: States with telephones. By nine thirty years later, they had
Speaker 1: twenty million phones. That's sixteen percent of the population. And Okay,
Speaker 1: some people had telephones other than Bell, but being that
Speaker 1: they were the biggest players in the phone industry kind
Speaker 1: of by far. It's an alright, rough idea, right, pretty
Speaker 1: much a monopoly. Yeah, by it was sent of the population.
Speaker 1: Then once we hit the digital age, things sped up
Speaker 1: kind of considerably. A Cellular phones debuted commercially in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties, and these days, uh, couple decades later,
Speaker 1: of the of United States adults have a cell phone alone,
Speaker 1: not even counting other types of telephone. So the adoption
Speaker 1: of cell phones was much more rapid than the adoption
Speaker 1: of phones in general, very much more rapid. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to a report put out by the United Nations,
Speaker 1: in six billion of the world's seven billion people have
Speaker 1: access to a mobile phone right now. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: you could argue that since people were already familiar with
Speaker 1: phones in general, it was a really easy switch, or
Speaker 1: that it's an infrastructure issue, not a person an adoption issue. Well, quick, quick,
Speaker 1: just sort of uh tangential question related to this, did
Speaker 1: you guys adopt cell phones relatively quickly? Did you hold
Speaker 1: out for a long time? Well, I was, I was
Speaker 1: a kid in the eighties, so it's a slightly different question. Um,
Speaker 1: but but but I I had one when I first
Speaker 1: went to college. I never had a real phone in college,
Speaker 1: a landline. I had a mobile phone. I specifically remember
Speaker 1: having a conversation on my college campus with friends who
Speaker 1: had just recently got a cell phone, which at that time,
Speaker 1: you know, early cell phones were pretty much that was
Speaker 1: the realm of the executive, right. There weren't very many
Speaker 1: people other than executives who had them in the early days.
Speaker 1: Truck drivers maybe as well, or like nerds like Fox Molder. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: actually he is a real person. Actually actually had a
Speaker 1: college professor who was so enamored with X files he
Speaker 1: would bring a fake giant plastic cell phone and have
Speaker 1: conversations with with a scully on the phone to give
Speaker 1: class announcements. What's that Scully? You want to remind me
Speaker 1: that Martin Luther King Junior day is is Monday? Al Right, guys, no,
Speaker 1: class Monday. That was really well, uh, he was awesome.
Speaker 1: It was my medieval lip profess. But anyway, No, I
Speaker 1: remember distinctly having the conversation at that time saying I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get one of those, because I can't
Speaker 1: imagine ever being in a situation where someone needs to
Speaker 1: get ahold of me so badly that I have to
Speaker 1: have the phone on my person. That's what answering machines
Speaker 1: are for. This was in the realm of answering machines. Y'all,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about digital voice recordings. So UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. Now I've got a smartphone and uh and
Speaker 1: and I it would be really hard to separate me
Speaker 1: from it. So how much message time could your wax
Speaker 1: cylinder record? Uh? It's you know, it depends. Uh. If
Speaker 1: the person was not terribly loquacious, I could get maybe
Speaker 1: two messages out of one. But mom, it was like
Speaker 1: it was like a roll and a half, which was
Speaker 1: unfortunate if someone was not there and actually switched them out. Um,
Speaker 1: at any rate. So that's also true. I would be
Speaker 1: really curious to see what the smartphone numbers are as well.
Speaker 1: I bet smartphone adoption is even faster than cell phone was, right,
Speaker 1: you would be so. Regarding people's level of comfort with
Speaker 1: existing and cutting edge technology, it may be that both
Speaker 1: development and adoption are not just speedy recently, but continuously
Speaker 1: speeding up. It's getting faster still. Uh. In a two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve article for The m I T Tech Review,
Speaker 1: Michael D. Gusta noted that recent technologies like smartphones and
Speaker 1: tablets might be spreading faster than any technology in human history,
Speaker 1: though he explicitly notes that it's difficult to compare all
Speaker 1: historical technological trends as well as global data about adoption rates. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: it seems a really distinct probability that these things are true.
Speaker 1: So older technology like grid electricity and landline telephones, which
Speaker 1: you talked about taking along time to reach saturation, might
Speaker 1: have taken longer to reach maturity because they required infrastructure development.
Speaker 1: Cell phones and smartphones required less, especially on the part
Speaker 1: of the consumer, and tablets required even less than that.
Speaker 1: So with smartphones, for the years throughout the two thousands,
Speaker 1: the technology dawdled sort of at fairly low adoption rates.
Speaker 1: You had some Blackberries and stuff like that. It was
Speaker 1: really when Apple released the iPhone in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: that the smartphone market really took off. So apparently it's
Speaker 1: sold one point twelve million in its first quarter. Uh
Speaker 1: and and that was despite having a high price to
Speaker 1: goose to notes, but it increased its market share very quickly,
Speaker 1: and so at the time this article was written in
Speaker 1: May two thousand twelve, he noted that fifty of all
Speaker 1: US mobile phone users, which was of the US population,
Speaker 1: now had smartphones. And just a little update as of
Speaker 1: j Neuarteen, I looked it up Pew Internet reports that
Speaker 1: fifty eight percent of American adults had a smartphone. That
Speaker 1: is really really fast maturity for a new technology. Now,
Speaker 1: there were some even faster developments in the tablet world.
Speaker 1: There was some sort of early trip ups early tablets
Speaker 1: that didn't really go anywhere. Again, it was Apple that
Speaker 1: made the difference. When Apple launched the iPad in April
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, it was relatively huge. Within a year
Speaker 1: and a half, tablets could be found in eleven percent
Speaker 1: of American households, and within two years, thirteen percent of
Speaker 1: US consumers owned a tablet. To Gusto noted that that
Speaker 1: adoption rate was faster than any other technology he could
Speaker 1: compare it to. UH. And that was again in May
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. What are the more recent numbers. This
Speaker 1: is astounding again from the Pew Internet Project fact sheet.
Speaker 1: As of January, forty two percent of American adults owned
Speaker 1: a tablet. That's in four years, less than four years UH.
Speaker 1: That's insane compared to these other technologies that took decades
Speaker 1: to reach that level of maturity and then eventual saturation
Speaker 1: in the American markets. And it suggests that we're incorporating
Speaker 1: more and more newer and newer technology into our lives
Speaker 1: faster and faster. But it's funny that I feel like
Speaker 1: there are two different ways you could interpret this relative
Speaker 1: to our question about people's level of comfort with technology.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that we're incorporating more and more technology
Speaker 1: into our lives before we're ready for it, so we're
Speaker 1: going to be even more and more confused and discombobulated
Speaker 1: by our devices in the future. Or does it mean
Speaker 1: something is changing in society where we are getting used
Speaker 1: to new technology faster than we used to, that our
Speaker 1: level of comfort with our devices is adapting to become
Speaker 1: more agreeable basically that we just get used to it,
Speaker 1: or that we're more eager to do it and therefore
Speaker 1: put in more of an effort to learn more quickly.
Speaker 1: I think, uh yeah, I think that's a big part
Speaker 1: of it, Lauren. I think that things like the um
Speaker 1: iPad have really set a precedent where it's it's increased
Speaker 1: the interest in consumer technology beyond what it used to
Speaker 1: be because it was something that was designed very well.
Speaker 1: First and foremost, it's a really good design. Secondly, it
Speaker 1: was marketed really well, so you had an amazing marketing
Speaker 1: push an amazing design um and the accommodation meant that
Speaker 1: it had a really positive reception in the public. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you had told me ten years ago
Speaker 1: that there would be people who would take time off
Speaker 1: of their jobs, like whether officially or not, in order
Speaker 1: to watch an industry event that Apple is holding, I
Speaker 1: would have thought you were crazy. But that's what happens there,
Speaker 1: to camp out outside of an Apple store for for
Speaker 1: a new product release, right That would also I would
Speaker 1: have told you you were crazy. I would have told
Speaker 1: my wife she was crazy when she did that way
Speaker 1: I've had too um. But but no, that's the that's
Speaker 1: the world we live in now. And I think part
Speaker 1: of that is that this this expectation now means that
Speaker 1: we're eager for that next thing that's going to be
Speaker 1: like the iPad tablet that will UH kind of give
Speaker 1: us that same sort of sense of of wonder of
Speaker 1: what technology can do. And I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: writing on wearables right now as being the next big
Speaker 1: UH form factor for that. And it may be that
Speaker 1: once someone has got the killer implementation of that, that
Speaker 1: we see the levels of adoption that are similar to
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in these other examples. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think this example might be an interesting thing that actually
Speaker 1: runs counter to our thesis that people's relationship to technology
Speaker 1: and the future should look more awkward. Maybe it shouldn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe future technology trends will be sort of
Speaker 1: dominated by this Apple like approach, where it says, look,
Speaker 1: user experiences first. Things need to be very comfortable and
Speaker 1: easy to use in your hand, especially before we move
Speaker 1: on one more quick point, especially being that the technology
Speaker 1: of marketing kind of tier point Jonathan is also stepping
Speaker 1: up pretty quickly, and that we are able to know
Speaker 1: about new technologies and able to troubleshoot them more easily. Hypothetically,
Speaker 1: if if, if the Internet is working at the time
Speaker 1: than than anyone was before, you know, you know, like
Speaker 1: people don't have to hear about a new Apple product
Speaker 1: by going out to a fair in their town and
Speaker 1: having someone stand up and present something to them about it.
Speaker 1: And they don't have to read a paper instruction manual.
Speaker 1: It's all very much at their fingertips. As broken bowns
Speaker 1: rheumatitis syphilitis. I have heard that in two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: all Apple marketing will be delivered by Carnival barkers. So
Speaker 1: I'm just saying I would really like that. That would
Speaker 1: be awesome. But no, more to your point, Joe about
Speaker 1: the the the assertion that perhaps in the future we've
Speaker 1: got these pieces of technology that integrates so easily. And
Speaker 1: that's why I don't I think that adopting technology quickly
Speaker 1: might be a trend, that does not necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: that technology is going to give us this seamless experience. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, I think there be even people
Speaker 1: who would easily argue that the iPad and iPhone are
Speaker 1: not completely free of of issues that are frustrating. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I I have had issues with Apple products before. I mean,
Speaker 1: if they I would say, I've had fewer issues with
Speaker 1: Apple products than with the non Apple products that I
Speaker 1: know and love and am supplied with by my workplace. Well, like,
Speaker 1: for example, the iPhone four is the one I liked
Speaker 1: to to cite because that was the one that had
Speaker 1: a little tiny gap on the lower left side that
Speaker 1: represented where the antenna was. And there were some people
Speaker 1: who reported that they were having reception issues with their phones.
Speaker 1: They were getting really terrible reception even when they would
Speaker 1: have another phone on that same provider, and it would
Speaker 1: have great reception, and there were multiple reasons that we're
Speaker 1: guessed about for this. Apple eventually came out and said
Speaker 1: you're holding it wrong, saying that if you were holding
Speaker 1: the phone in such a way that your hand obscured
Speaker 1: this little section of the phone. Basically, everyone holds their phone.
Speaker 1: Certainly anyone who's left handed would hold it where the
Speaker 1: left side is against their palm as opposed to their fingers. Um,
Speaker 1: so left handers, we just hold everything wrong. I am
Speaker 1: a left hander everything. I know this me and ten
Speaker 1: percent of the population, which realizes a rough number. But yes, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's just me. Okay, that's fair, get off my line.
Speaker 1: So the but yeah, this is this is one of
Speaker 1: those things where again this was a user problem with
Speaker 1: an Apple product. So I imagine that we're going to
Speaker 1: see this happen in the future where uh, you know
Speaker 1: the issues that you can't as a designer necessarily anticipate
Speaker 1: all the use cases for the thing that you are making. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: if my job is to make the next amazing piece
Speaker 1: of technology that's going to be your you know, techno
Speaker 1: arm bracer that gives you the redoubts of everything, you
Speaker 1: need to know that day and you could just stare
Speaker 1: at your forearm and you've got all the information you need.
Speaker 1: I'm doing it based upon what I think is going
Speaker 1: to be the universal experience. But I can't really know
Speaker 1: what the universal experience is going to be. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be filtered through my own preferences, um, even if I'm
Speaker 1: getting notes from other people. So it's very possible I
Speaker 1: could come up with a product that for a lot
Speaker 1: of people just doesn't work. I could have a real
Speaker 1: problem with that piece of technologies, certainly would. But he
Speaker 1: is what he is, So I mean that's just that's
Speaker 1: you have that as as a poster right there in
Speaker 1: the development team, because if you designed for Popye, you'd
Speaker 1: have a very limited customer base. Yeah, but at any rate, Okay,
Speaker 1: the general usability and adaptability of consumer products. It's kind
Speaker 1: of another factor that we wanted to talk about here, oh,
Speaker 1: in that most movies never portray technology as being annoying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well again, some satirical ones do, but you're straightforward sci
Speaker 1: fi action drama kind of that thing. Right, If it's
Speaker 1: horror movies, then the technology is always going to to
Speaker 1: crap out the moment when you need it most, Right,
Speaker 1: that's that's the trope in in horror movies. The trope
Speaker 1: and science fiction is the technology works until you need
Speaker 1: it to not work. Right, So in a in a
Speaker 1: world like Minority Report, the technology is just this amazing,
Speaker 1: integrated thing that's part of your life, just as any
Speaker 1: other element of your life would be considered like a
Speaker 1: defining thing you would you would not be able to
Speaker 1: imagine that world without that technology there, though, it is
Speaker 1: funny how we've got technology very deeply integrated into our lives.
Speaker 1: Are our phones and our computers and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and these pieces of technology still do extremely annoying things.
Speaker 1: It is deeply, very much a part of my life
Speaker 1: that I use my phone all the time. My phone
Speaker 1: has all kinds of terribly annoying habits well. And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of issues at play here, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not just that a single device might do something annoying.
Speaker 1: It's that we don't have Like in the Star Trek universe,
Speaker 1: you get the feeling that everything is made by the
Speaker 1: same person, the same person. There's one guy who's making everything.
Speaker 1: That's everybody's used, the phasers, the replicators, everything is integrated,
Speaker 1: whereas in reality you've got all these different companies making
Speaker 1: different form factors with different user interfaces for stuff that's
Speaker 1: supposed to do the same thing, right, right, Yeah, Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise never like goes over to a friend's house and
Speaker 1: goes like, wait, wait, I'm trying to swipe the thing
Speaker 1: and it's not swiping. Yeah. Oh, it's because the Swipe
Speaker 1: Tech patented that particular user interface, and so this one,
Speaker 1: because it's not a swipe Tech display, you can't swipe.
Speaker 1: You have to blink three times. You know that that.
Speaker 1: That's the thing is that when you're able to patent
Speaker 1: a process, which you can do with the United States,
Speaker 1: then you can apply that to your technology and then
Speaker 1: limit what other companies can do. So they either have
Speaker 1: to license that from you or they have to figure
Speaker 1: out a different way around it, which means there's no
Speaker 1: universality to a user interface or form factor. You've got
Speaker 1: a lot of fractured landscape going on, is what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to set, like right, and and for them were
Speaker 1: like like your your Star Trek communicator works with all
Speaker 1: of the computers and start because it just does right.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you know, we've talked about this with the
Speaker 1: Internet of things, if you wanted to have that integrated experience.
Speaker 1: Right now, with like all the kitchen appliances that can
Speaker 1: talk to each other, you have to get them all
Speaker 1: from the same vendor, or you need a industry wide
Speaker 1: kitchen protocol. Right. So that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: technology is frustrating is because we don't have a universal
Speaker 1: standard that each form factor has to adhere to, and
Speaker 1: we don't really want to have that because then you're
Speaker 1: stuck with whatever has been produced. Right, you don't have
Speaker 1: any choice in the matter, Whereas with choice, you've got competition,
Speaker 1: which at least in theory, means the consumer gets the
Speaker 1: benefit because the consumer can pick between whichever form factors
Speaker 1: and user interfaces appeals to that person the most. So
Speaker 1: there's a trade off here, Right, you have the great
Speaker 1: advantage of choice, but the disadvantage of the fact that
Speaker 1: the thing you have may not work the way the
Speaker 1: thing someone else has, and when you try to get
Speaker 1: the two to interact, it may not be a smooth experience,
Speaker 1: unlike the world of the sci fi where everything works
Speaker 1: together all the time until some catastrophe happens. There's also,
Speaker 1: I think a thing that bears mentioning, which is the
Speaker 1: gap between the expectations of what technology can do and
Speaker 1: what it actually does, which we've experienced many times in
Speaker 1: our lives throughout the years. Um, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you necessarily expect to see this so much in sci fi,
Speaker 1: because that would sort of would have to cover sort
Speaker 1: of in the marketing and the media approach to something
Speaker 1: and then you see how it falls flat. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily expect to see that in every story. But it
Speaker 1: is a very funny feature of consumer tech that I
Speaker 1: feel like you don't see in sci fi all that
Speaker 1: Often the virtual reality problem, right, the idea, the idea
Speaker 1: that you've heard about this technology for long enough, and
Speaker 1: by the time you're able to actually experience that firsthand,
Speaker 1: you realize that the reality and the hype don't measure up.
Speaker 1: So virtual reality in the Nines is the perfect example.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I ever got to put
Speaker 1: on one of those helmets and m and play that
Speaker 1: Pterodactyl game, and like I was thinking, like, well, it's
Speaker 1: really cool that I can look around and my motions
Speaker 1: in the real world are being translated into the virtual world.
Speaker 1: But but I just vomited five times. Mostly I'm just
Speaker 1: nauseating the latency was certainly an issue in those early days.
Speaker 1: What was interesting was that you could definitely get the
Speaker 1: feeling of a virtual presence, like you could feel like
Speaker 1: when you walk over toward an edge in the game,
Speaker 1: that you were near a physical edge even though you
Speaker 1: were just standing on the ground. That was interesting, but
Speaker 1: the actual sophistication was lacking, and so there was this
Speaker 1: big gap between what we expected and what what what
Speaker 1: was delivered at the time. I played a virtual reality
Speaker 1: game at a festival one time in the nineties, and
Speaker 1: I remember, I think, you know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: like every movie I went to see in the theater
Speaker 1: was the best movie I've ever seen, and I had
Speaker 1: I was very easily satisfied, I guess. But I do
Speaker 1: remember after this experience having this feeling like someone wasn't
Speaker 1: write about that well. And of course there are other
Speaker 1: examples like the one I wrote down here was a
Speaker 1: series and voice controls in general, the idea of having
Speaker 1: this this voice activated personal assistant, the kind of backlash
Speaker 1: after it came out where people were like, this serie
Speaker 1: thing is kind of dumb. Yeah, Like at first people
Speaker 1: were thinking this is really cool, and they were having
Speaker 1: a lot of fun with the stuff that kind of
Speaker 1: the Easter eggs that were hidden with was mostly fun
Speaker 1: to get cheeky with. Yeah, it was. It was a
Speaker 1: diversion more than an actual useful sory. Where can I
Speaker 1: do something illegal? Right? Where where can I hide a body?
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Um. And then also I had
Speaker 1: the windows Surface tablet, which was really being pushed as
Speaker 1: the next like a really viable competitor to Apple's iPad. Uh,
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of people who were legitimately
Speaker 1: hoping that this would happen because competition, again is a
Speaker 1: good thing. Competition pushes companies to keep innovating and to
Speaker 1: improve their products. So even if you never planned on
Speaker 1: getting a windows surface tablet, you might have hoped that
Speaker 1: it was a really good tablet because that would mean
Speaker 1: Apple would have to come back and for the iPad
Speaker 1: seventeen it would have to be truly amazing that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and that they would continuously push each other.
Speaker 1: But the general reception of the windows Surface tablet was
Speaker 1: that they just didn't quite It just didn't have the
Speaker 1: magic that needed to have to really be a competitor
Speaker 1: or the iPad. So again another expectation versus reality. Problem. Cool. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should round this up end by giving
Speaker 1: a salute to a few sci fi visions that really
Speaker 1: do capture the awkwardness of consumer technology in a very
Speaker 1: perceptive and funny way. Sure, as we've said throughout, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the sci fi that does this
Speaker 1: best is satirical. I've been trying to think of a
Speaker 1: serious sci fi movie that or book or whatever that
Speaker 1: does this, and I haven't thought of one yet, though
Speaker 1: I'm sure they exist. But but we've got several satirical
Speaker 1: ones here, one which I don't know which of you noted,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a great one. Brazil, right, and
Speaker 1: Brazil that I wrote that one down, But Brazil really
Speaker 1: also goes back into that Parkinson's law as well, because
Speaker 1: it's all it's not just about kind of a weird
Speaker 1: science fiction big brother state world, which it is. It's
Speaker 1: a big brother state world that's not efficient at all.
Speaker 1: It's it's rampant with bureaucracy. Right. We should say it's
Speaker 1: a Terry Gilliam film, Yes, Terry Gilliam film, and it uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it brings that Terry Gilliam sensibility. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of absurdity and and things are just useless and
Speaker 1: pointless and don't make any sense, but they wield power. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's if it's a rule, you have to follow it,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, like the rule doesn't have to
Speaker 1: make sense, but the rule has to be followed. And
Speaker 1: there's a possibility that no one knows why that rule
Speaker 1: is in place at all. Right, that rule may have
Speaker 1: outlived its usefulness, but because it's a rule, it's going
Speaker 1: to be there. So that describes the government and the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy in the movie. But the technology is an extension
Speaker 1: of that same principle. There's all this technology that doesn't
Speaker 1: appear to have any real purpose the work. Yeah, hilarious
Speaker 1: machines that are these giant machines with these tiny little
Speaker 1: screens on and uh, it looks like a kind of
Speaker 1: a retro version of the future too. There's like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of of old fashioned typewriters that are worked
Speaker 1: into it. You know. It's it's a mixture of old
Speaker 1: tech and high tech sensibilities and also a level of
Speaker 1: the grotesque. There's quite a bit of the grotesque, like
Speaker 1: the facelift device that is pretty memorable in a couple
Speaker 1: of scenes, but um, you know, this is the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff that you look at it and it's it's
Speaker 1: definitely pointing out the the the kind of absurdities of
Speaker 1: technology that we often encounter. Another one is Hitchhiker's Guide
Speaker 1: to the Galaxy. Yep I wrote that one down to
Speaker 1: this one also has a lot like this is a
Speaker 1: universe that you can totally imagine existing, right It's it's
Speaker 1: an absurd, comedic universe created by Douglas Adams. And in
Speaker 1: this world there's plenty of technology that works sometimes despite itself.
Speaker 1: So for example, there's a device that Arthur Dent, who
Speaker 1: is formerly a resident of England. Uh contemporary, I mean
Speaker 1: like like nineteen eighties to two thousands England, depending on
Speaker 1: when exactly, Yeah, which version you're watching sum so if
Speaker 1: you're if you're consuming the original version, yeah, nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties era England, he was a resident there
Speaker 1: and England spoiler alert in the in the story doesn't
Speaker 1: exist anymore because the Earth was blown up, but Arthur
Speaker 1: happens on the third page. Arthur. Arthur is obsessed with
Speaker 1: getting a nice cup of tea because he's a real
Speaker 1: he's British, he's British. He's extremely British, and so a
Speaker 1: cup of tea is sort of his way of dealing
Speaker 1: with the world. Ending like he's got some stressed to
Speaker 1: to deal with. Uh, And he encounters a device that,
Speaker 1: in the words of Douglas Adams, is something along the
Speaker 1: lines that's able to produce something that is almost, but
Speaker 1: not quite entirely unlike tea. So it's almost the opposite
Speaker 1: of whatever t is, but not quite. It's just on
Speaker 1: the side of tea enough for it to be identifiable
Speaker 1: as being almost completely wrong. That the automatic doors in
Speaker 1: this universe before they will let you into or out
Speaker 1: of themselves, need to talk to you for a while
Speaker 1: about their feelings about open They thank you for for
Speaker 1: for for walking through them every single time. This is
Speaker 1: a specifically on that feature. It's on the Heart of Gold,
Speaker 1: the Heart of Gold spaceship. Yeah. No. And then you've
Speaker 1: got Marvin, Marvin the paranoid android. I mean, is this
Speaker 1: what we really want when we say we want general
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence? Do we want to be able to really
Speaker 1: simulate the human mind to program manic depression into a
Speaker 1: into a robo. Actually, I guess it's not even mannic
Speaker 1: depression is just depressions. He has the size brain, the
Speaker 1: size of the planet, and he's standing on a car
Speaker 1: park for a thousand years. Um, yeah, it's It's another
Speaker 1: one of those examples where the technology is another element
Speaker 1: of absurdity on top of an already absurd story. But
Speaker 1: it really does point out that in this version, in
Speaker 1: this world, this universe that Arthur Dent goes through, the
Speaker 1: things we've talked about with consumer tech and the pitfalls
Speaker 1: associated with it, at least in this particular book, are universal.
Speaker 1: They're not not limited to the human experience. And then
Speaker 1: because everyone's ridiculous. Sure, I guess, I guess Another example
Speaker 1: of that would be the Fifth Element. Yeah, I wrote
Speaker 1: this one down. Um, I filled up this one. I
Speaker 1: was as I was thinking about it, I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of of science fiction movies where the technology,
Speaker 1: at some point or another just is giving people problems.
Speaker 1: And the Fifth Element has a couple of moments like that. Particularly, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a moment where Bruce Willis's character there's a knock
Speaker 1: at the door, doorbell rings, and he goes to answer
Speaker 1: at the door and there's a would be robber at
Speaker 1: the door who's holding a gun. Pointing at Bruce Willis's
Speaker 1: character and the he's really twitchy robber guy, and Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis's character just very casually reaches over and says, you've
Speaker 1: got the safety on and turns the safety off for
Speaker 1: the robber who just kind of just like uh, and
Speaker 1: then and then he Bruce Willis pulls his own gun
Speaker 1: on the robber is like, why don't you just hand
Speaker 1: that over here, and gets like okay. But it's one
Speaker 1: of those moments where like, like the technology is not
Speaker 1: you know, you could you would imagine then the future world,
Speaker 1: everything that is designed to do something is supposed to
Speaker 1: do it really really well, even weapons, even weapons, and
Speaker 1: even weapons, especially weapons in some cases, especially in the
Speaker 1: world of the Fifth Element, which is pretty violent. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the technology and the Fifth Element ranges from
Speaker 1: really useful to unreliable. So it's seems pretty realistic. And
Speaker 1: also the vision of the future, and that is not
Speaker 1: the pristine, glorious, glimmering future that you've see in a
Speaker 1: lot of other, like you know, far thinking science fiction films. Yeah,
Speaker 1: though that one, I would also say, though I wouldn't
Speaker 1: strictly call it a satire, it is UM does have
Speaker 1: strong humorous undercurrent. Say it's a comedy adventure with an
Speaker 1: emphasis on the comedy. Yeah, you can't. You can't have
Speaker 1: the characters in that movie and not comedic comedy. Uh no,
Speaker 1: we straight future RuPaul is certainly a thing that happens.
Speaker 1: Uh no. And and it's that one in particular I
Speaker 1: find pretty interesting because it's again a very cobbled together
Speaker 1: version of the future that incorporates a lot of historical
Speaker 1: technology and historical looking technology, and different characters from different
Speaker 1: characters from different social strata have access to different types
Speaker 1: of technology, and there's a little bit of a discussion
Speaker 1: about the economics of all of that. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of different cultures represented, including alien cultures as it turns out,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting that you you see this kind
Speaker 1: of mishmash world and there is still like a social structure.
Speaker 1: Like you were saying, it kind of falls in that
Speaker 1: the lower in the world you are, the lower floor
Speaker 1: you live on. Essentially, it's it's kind of a kind
Speaker 1: of a direct correlative there. So what do you all think,
Speaker 1: I mean, have we been too hard to do? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Uh maybe these movies have some good reasons for making
Speaker 1: all the future technology the consumer technology looks sleek, sexy, fast,
Speaker 1: easy to use, perfect Or should they make an effort
Speaker 1: maybe to show more of the foibles of the consumer electronics.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, I think if it's not distracting, um,
Speaker 1: then it's perfectly fine to throw in a couple of
Speaker 1: little moments, if that's not even the point of the movie.
Speaker 1: Like even let's say you've got a plot of a
Speaker 1: movie where technology is part of the setting, but it's
Speaker 1: not the focal focal point, so it's not like the
Speaker 1: technology has risen up against the humans. But I think
Speaker 1: it's still fine to have. Like, even if it's just
Speaker 1: a background thing where you see someone who's clearly struggling
Speaker 1: with something, I think that could be a moment where
Speaker 1: you think, oh, yeah, I guess in the future, will
Speaker 1: will still be human? Yeah yeah, it's a humanizing moment,
Speaker 1: And I think it it can. It's a great potential
Speaker 1: for levity, which I I personally enjoy very much, even
Speaker 1: in very very action, blow stuff up all those serious
Speaker 1: things kind of movies, and especially in those. Really I
Speaker 1: think it's a terrific little salt to to the dish.
Speaker 1: I kind of negatively in terms of what's actually going
Speaker 1: to happen in the future, and this is kind of
Speaker 1: a cynical outlook. I suspect that that this is going
Speaker 1: to be a social strata economic kind of issue, wherein
Speaker 1: the upper classes are going to have perhaps the more sleek,
Speaker 1: more wonderful technology, and that there might be more of
Speaker 1: a divide unfortunately between the halves and have nots in
Speaker 1: this sort of discussion. Yeah, when you talk about is
Speaker 1: technology some extent, it is very much like that today.
Speaker 1: And so I guess the question is will it get better?
Speaker 1: I mean, uh maybe maybe, I hope. We definitely want
Speaker 1: that future, right, we want the future where people have
Speaker 1: uh more affordable access to that kind of thing. If
Speaker 1: we ever hit the Star Trek future, then money doesn't
Speaker 1: matter anymore and everybody has access to everything, which would
Speaker 1: be nice. Also jumpsuits also, never forget the jumpsuits. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: I guess they're wraps up this discussion. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for things we never see in science
Speaker 1: fiction that you want us to cover, maybe you think, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what we never see anymore? Ruby Rod? Can
Speaker 1: we see more Ruby Rod and science fiction? Let us know.
Speaker 1: Send us a message on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.
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