Has your love of technology changed?

I love technology but I'm now fully on board with the anti waste movement. I started noticing how much plastic comes into the house. I started noticing how often i was replacing Chinese garbage because it was cheap to do so.

My purchases have slowed right down and now I buy things to keep. I bought an expensive Miele vacuum a while back and recently had it serviced. Prior to that I had maybe 3 cheap vacuums in 4 or 5 years. Next up I want to get some tools so I'll be going to Halfords Advanced for the stuff that will get abused.

When I do buy technology now I'm looking at lifetime guarantees or ease of repair.

Also any Alexa enabled product can stay the hell away from my house. I'm not interested at all in sharing that kind of data.
 
It’s not changed but my need to tinker and mess with things has.

When top of the range video cards stopped being £500 I stopped gaming on my PC.

These days I’m content with a Mac mini and a PS5/Switch.
 
movingtables said:
Do i really need to ask Alexa to switch the lights on? i mean I'd prefer to just switch it on/off via my hand.
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I didn't get Hue until I gave it a chance when in the sales after a mate kept on going on about how good it is. Turning lights on and off all at the same time is good, setting mood lighting (I go for oranges and gold colours) is great. Also when I had to get up early for work, having lights fade in was amazing.

movingtables said:
Why do people feel the need to buy a video door bell so they can watch their street in their dinner hour at work.
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This stopped the odd 'interesting' visitor I had which was most likely targeting my bungalow because they thought there was a old person living there.
 
I don't get much excited about tech now. Component prices mean my planned upgrade is now deferred indefinitely. The longer that lasts, the more likely I am to go console, I guess.

I don't think I'd get much value from remote controlling my lights/ doorbell/ cooker and it would just mean upgrading them in future and more hassle generally.

Most tech is just iterative now- bigger screens etc. I don't think I'll ever get the wow I got from my first 3dfx card again.

The biggest tech thing for me in the last few years was ecigs. I got pretty excited last night when I realised that saved me around £800 in the last 12 months, since I started using one.

Ecigs are an underrated public good. They've probably saved dozens of lives in house fires alone.
 
Yeah I'd say I don't love technology anymore.
It's still useful occasionally, e.g. 144hz monitors, fibre internet, electric cars.
But usually garbage commercial nonsense, e.g. alexa, hue, ring, smart meters.
 
One thing I am interested in is smart heating.

Due to detached nature of house some. Rooms bake on South Side and others are quite cool on North. It isn't even a big house.

But I don't need a voice assistant. I just really want to set each valve at 20c and be done.
 
413x said:
One thing I am interested in is smart heating.

Due to detached nature of house some. Rooms bake on South Side and others are quite cool on North. It isn't even a big house.

But I don't need a voice assistant. I just really want to set each valve at 20c and be done.
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Actually this is a good point on one of the more revolutionary things as of late. Can only imagine how much gas was wasted heating empty houses before Hive/Tado etc!
 
Edinho said:
I think a lot of it is about having and knowing something that's niche and a bit like a well kept secret - the web in the mid 90's was still out of reach of most people and they didn't care about it.

It's a bit like knowing a band or having a niche hobby - once everyone has jumped on the bandwagon it takes the edge away from it.

I still like tech just not the mainstream stuff.
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This plays in to it for sure; I remember downloading mp3s and films in the 90s when the average man on the street would think it absolutely bonkers that someone would be sourcing and listening to music/film via a computer. But that 'edgy' culture has been driven out now it's almost become the standard for people to stream music and video rather than physical media.
Resident said:
For me the thing that grates me isn't the technology itself, it's the way it's been dumbed down so morons can use it. I enjoyed configuring stuff and needing a small bit of knowledge and intelligence to make it work. Now it's just a case of plug it in and turn it on.
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Yeah even cpus seem to overclock themselves these days and have fancy software suites, the days of feeling smug about tinkering in the BIOS are diminished now.

That said - I think the feeling of 'elitism' we once had was a bit overplayed, there is undeniably good mainstream tech out there now like mobile internet, WiFi (don't get me wrong, ethernet is best but less flexible), streaming media etc. The fact you can contact most organisations online is great, no need to write a letter or be put on hold for hours on the phone. I also don't feel like I need to be embarrassed so much about doing stuff online, playing games etc (it's ironic really, when I was late teens early 20s I felt like society would brand me a massive geek for gaming etc - people at uni thought it was a bit weird me playing on the internet etc - but now in my 40s I'm a lot more open about it). Online dating is another one, I dabbled in the early 00s and there was a bit of stigma attached (OMG what a loser using the internet to find a partner, hahaha!), but nowadays people seem to consider it quite normal to use dating apps etc.

To address the original question, I'd say not really, I remain interested in tech. There's some tech I'm not bought into like smart lighting/heating/doorbells etc but that's always been the case, it's not like I've always had every piece of tech over the years.
 
HangTime said:
This plays in to it for sure; I remember downloading mp3s and films in the 90s when the average man on the street would think it absolutely bonkers that someone would be sourcing and listening to music/film via a computer. But that 'edgy' culture has been driven out now it's almost become the standard for people to stream music and video rather than physical media.

Yeah even cpus seem to overclock themselves these days and have fancy software suites, the days of feeling smug about tinkering in the BIOS are diminished now.

That said - I think the feeling of 'elitism' we once had was a bit overplayed, there is undeniably good mainstream tech out there now like mobile internet, WiFi (don't get me wrong, ethernet is best but less flexible), streaming media etc. The fact you can contact most organisations online is great, no need to write a letter or be put on hold for hours on the phone. I also don't feel like I need to be embarrassed so much about doing stuff online, playing games etc (it's ironic really, when I was late teens early 20s I felt like society would brand me a massive geek for gaming etc - people at uni thought it was a bit weird me playing on the internet etc - but now in my 40s I'm a lot more open about it). Online dating is another one, I dabbled in the early 00s and there was a bit of stigma attached (OMG what a loser using the internet to find a partner, hahaha!), but nowadays people seem to consider it quite normal to use dating apps etc.

To address the original question, I'd say not really, I remain interested in tech. There's some tech I'm not bought into like smart lighting/heating/doorbells etc but that's always been the case, it's not like I've always had every piece of tech over the years.
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I do have to say, with regards to the last line of your post. I see the benefits of 'smart' products. I have a disability that sometimes confines me to limited movement so if I'm resting and need to alter the heating or turn lights on I can simply ask my devices to do as I want them too.

I concede, because of this, that there are benefits to making technology better and easier to use but I'm not sure that currently the benefits are outweigh the negatives.
 
Edinho said:
Take this for an example...

I am going to be moving house at some point. Now, the geek in me is probably going to network each room with cat5. Normal people would think 'why are you going to do that? Pointless with wi-fi'.

But then normal people think wi-fi is great and don't realise it is crap.
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Normal people would think "Why aren't you using CAT6 ribbon cable?" :D
 
HangTime said:
TOnline dating is another one, I dabbled in the early 00s and there was a bit of stigma attached (OMG what a loser using the internet to find a partner, hahaha!), but nowadays people seem to consider it quite normal to use dating apps etc.
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I met my wife online back when it was deemed a joke to meet someone online (yeah it was one of THOSE types of sites) but 14 years later we're still married and happy. Now it's the norm to meet people online first.
 
Already been said but phones and gadgets no longer offer actually useful advances in tech but instead just do things with bigger numbers. I used to get a new phone every year because everything was better each year with new gen camera sensors, visibly better screens, better touch response etc etc. Now even a midrange phone is far better than previous flagships and they cost half as much. The only difference being camera processing is still better on flagships but the difference is small enough that it won't matter to the majority of people.

Other areas of tech haven't really taken off in next gen waves either. Smart appliances are still basic, for example. I won't be overhauling anything major until AI and IA can interconnect and I can do actions with natural language. This won't be the norm until the mid 2030s so a long ways to go still.

4K8KW10 said:
I will be impressed by a monitor with life-like image.
That probably means 16K on a 17 inch screen.
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What does this actually mean though? A display is a display. Do current monitors not offer a realistic image? As a portrait photographer
my monitor is hardware calibrated every 6 months or so and the image it shows is as life-like as it can be - How can anything be more life-like when colour, luminscity etc are already within 0.2cdm/k variation to what is essentially reference daylight?

I think what you mean is more detailed, for which yes a 16k monitor would produce a packed pixel dense image, but on a smaller monitor you'd need to strain your eyes more to make use of it. This needs to be on a massive monitor much larger than the current norm of 34" ultra-wide and then the source media needs to be 16k too and as it stands nothing out there is or will be for a very long time. 8k has been out a while and there are still no uncompressed 8k sources to enjoy and consumer phones and cameras that record 8K do so in a half assed fashion with compression and curtains which ends up looking forse than 4K 30fps.

So after all that what I can say is that what you actually want is a better quality monitor. A large ultra-wide with a QLED or OLED panel for excellent black levels and little to no edge bleeding. Calibrate the colours and you have yourself a true to life as you can get an image to be on a display.
 
mrk said:
What does this actually mean though? A display is a display. Do current monitors not offer a realistic image? As a portrait photographer
my monitor is hardware calibrated every 6 months or so and the image it shows is as life-like as it can be - How can anything be more life-like when colour, luminscity etc are already within 0.2cdm/k variation to what is essentially reference daylight?

I think what you mean is more detailed, for which yes a 16k monitor would produce a packed pixel dense image, but on a smaller monitor you'd need to strain your eyes more to make use of it. This needs to be on a massive monitor much larger than the current norm of 34" ultra-wide and then the source media needs to be 16k too and as it stands nothing out there is or will be for a very long time. 8k has been out a while and there are still no uncompressed 8k sources to enjoy and consumer phones and cameras that record 8K do so in a half assed fashion with compression and curtains which ends up looking forse than 4K 30fps.

So after all that what I can say is that what you actually want is a better quality monitor. A large ultra-wide with a QLED or OLED panel for excellent black levels and little to no edge bleeding. Calibrate the colours and you have yourself a true to life as you can get an image to be on a display.
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No and yes.
Current monitors offer realistic image, but not real image - I want to look at my monitor and see the same things as if I am looking through a window in the real surroundings.

The current monitors only approximate the image but are very far away from true reality.

One of the things which can help is increasing the pixels per inch on a classic liquid crystal display.


Another thing which would impress me is hydrogen-powered car.

Another thing is quantum energy plants replacing the nuclear power plants.


etc, etc.
 
The last piece of technology I can remember giving me the wow factor was my first OLED TV. Everything since then like a new graphics card or phone hasn't really done much, as such I've stopped upgrading as often.
 
arknor said:
technology was once new and exciting gadgets, now it's just stuff for the sake of it even if it doesn't really offer a benefit.

it almost became a status symbol to have stuff so you can show off
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Very much this, though showing off new stuff has always been a thing. I remember one of my school friends inviting people round to his house to show off their Betamax VCR (still a far better standard than VHS...).
 
I’ve lost interest in technology.
The days of me wanting the latest and greatest are over, maybe the because technology now is so “good” and advancements are not so “major”.

Used to spend hours researching games and mobile phones etc and now I couldn’t careless about gaming. And phones I have the urge to upgrade when a new one comes out like I did just a few years ago.

Also don’t like how technology has become
so embedded into our lives from children to adults. I definitely feel for myself technology whilst it’s had many positives,
It’s also contributed negatively to my life.
Due to how easy it is to get sucked into spending hours on the internet for example, but obviously I can’t solely blame technology and must take some accountability.
 
Like a few here I don't really care about latest and greatest. I used to change phone every 12-18mth now it's like 36-48.
I don't game on PC anymore and even then, the last I built was very modest (2600 and a 2060 gpu). I have actually had a massive swing away from material things in general. I don't really want anything anymore it's more a case of if I need it.
 
I moved from a phone with:

5.99 in, IPS, 1080 x 2160 pixels, 24 bit, 403 pixels per inch, 550 cd/m2, 95% NTSC

to a phone with:

6.21 in, OLED, 1080 x 2248 pixels, 24 bit, 402 pixels per inch, 530 cd/m2, 100% DCI-P3, HDR10


and to be honest, except maybe somehow deeper blacks and higher contrast, I am not convinced at all by OLED of any type.


Actually, the image crispness on the IPS LCD looked higher.
Maybe it's an effect produced by the self-emitting points which increase the threshold of visible pixels.



Our eyes-brain can see infinite detail with maximum clarity.
 
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