Is technology getting a bit boring? (Interesting new tech thread)

MikeTheNative said:
Completely disagree with this. Young people are using social media to consume content on their hobby not always replace it. I imagine you used to take to forums to discuss your car modifying. Now the young use Instagram etc. instead to view/ talk about it.
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im not sure about that, the car scene might be a bad example. When the first Fast And Furious movie came out in late 2001, there used to be loads of tacky corsas and saxos with bodykits driving about for 5-8 years along with the max power mags in the 90s. everyone used to be able to find any social group (rockers, ravers, gamers etc) easy and used to know who they were in their local area. Now people post about it on instagram because they cant find any social \ hobby groups local to them. the scenes back then were much bigger on a local scale, but appear bigger on social media due to the spread of people in the country
 
I'm not sure it's age- I have decades of experience and am pretty sure I can gauge value better now.

PC upgrades are low priority for me now.

The cost of an upgrade is ridiculous, and there is diminishing returns. When people are pushing a £1500 graphics card as the "only value option" in the new generation, something is badly wrong.

Phones are "good enough", and I only upgrade when they die now.

VR is the only technology that excites me. Even though I don't use my rift much, that was a proper WOW moment.
 
potatolord said:
I'm not sure it's age- I have decades of experience and am pretty sure I can gauge value better now.

PC upgrades are low priority for me now.

The cost of an upgrade is ridiculous, and there is diminishing returns. When people are pushing a £1500 graphics card as the "only value option" in the new generation, something is badly wrong.

Phones are "good enough", and I only upgrade when they die now.

VR is the only technology that excites me. Even though I don't use my rift much, that was a proper WOW moment.
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Same for me. The first time I put on my Oculus DK1 was a massive wow moment up there with Mario 64.
 
I do agree we seem to be faced with marginal incremental improvements these days. If I compare my tech today to say 6-7 years ago:
  • Mobile phones basically the same plus 5G. I don't do anything on my phone today I wasn't doing an equivalent of back then.
  • PCs obviously a bit more powerful but fundamentally the same.
  • 4K TVs are cheaper now and perhaps better image quality but no new standards have taken off
  • If you count cars as tech then yes there's a lot more competition/innovation in the EV space
  • We're using the same sort of smart devices (speakers, lighting etc)
  • Online integration has improved a bit (smart TVs, on demand streaming etc)
  • Games consoles the same except for the better online integration and 4k/120hz support
Maybe the biggest sign is that I don't own any new types of gadget. Thinking about it the last time I bought anything that was a 'new thing' rather than simply a better version of something I already had was I think a first generation Amazon Echo (over 7 years ago). Even then you could argue was just a combination of some smartphone features with a bluetooth speaker, both of which I already owned.

Some people above around talking about it just being due to age / losing interest in tech, I don't feel that's particularly the case for me. I think it's more that tech steadily advanced through my childhood and early adulthood (cd, dvd, 3d accelerator graphics cards, internet, digital cameras, broadband, mobile phones, smart phones / tablets , digital TV, mp3 players, media streaming, sat navs / consumer GPS etc etc). Basically all of those things took off in the 90s and 00s. In the 10s and 20s what's really been added to my portfolio?... better online integration, higher resolution screens, faster internet (both fixed line and mobile), smart devices, AI. 3D/VR doesn't really do much for me as I don't have stereoscopic vision. So basically not a lot has moved forward since I hit 30, I haven't lost interest, there's just little to direct that interest towards.
 
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UTmaniac said:
Anyone in their 40s has been around to see a remarkable tech surge in our lifetimes, such as...
Mobile phones
Wired internet
Mobile broadband
Wi-fi
PC builds
etc.

I wouldn't say tech development has got boring for me, more like advances seem less revolutionary.
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Absolutely. Its also less revolutionary because manufacturers have cottoned on that consumers wanted to spend money upgrading so expect new models to come out every year. With a yearly cycle for each new model, its hardly surprising its less revolutionary
 
Tech is a little more boring because its so mature in so many areas but I think we are also at the stage where tech is so entrenched in our lives and we are all so cynical that even cool new tech just flies under the radar.

That and a huge amount of "tech" in the past 10 years has been developed by social media companies with the sole goal of turning everyone into easily influenced consumer zombies.
 
Maybe we could use this thread to post interesting tech advances?

The most interesting new(?) tech I have seen recently is the Bigscreen Beyond VR headset:


Although it is technically just an iterative product, the fact that it is custom made for the shape of your face and is super light solves the biggest problem VR has for me and that is comfort.
 
Yes.

The only decent bit of progress that I REALLY like is affordable OLED TV's. Backlight bleed/halos etc etc always bothered me greatly ever since CRTs went out the window and LCD/LED screens came about. Im frustrated by the lack of afforable OLED PC monitors still.

Everything else over the last decade or so seems to have been massively incremental/boring. For example game graphics progress is mega slow now. It is difficult to tell the difference between last gen and current gen games sometimes. Arguably something like RDR2 which was on Xbox One is far better looking and technically impressive than almost any game released recently.

There was an amazing surge in personal computing/handheld devices but it all seems to have simmered down now. Honestly my latest phone pretty much does little more than my Galaxy S3 did 10 years ago.
 
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For me the issue is that the tech we are given nowadays is not designed for creativity but just consumerism.

Previously even getting a ******* printer to work required logic and research skills.

Now we have endless closed system touch screen devices designed for swiping and watching rather than inputting.
 
Orangeade said:
For me the issue is that the tech we are given nowadays is not designed for creativity but just consumerism.

Previously even getting a ******* printer to work required logic and research skills.

Now we have endless closed system touch screen devices designed for swiping and watching rather than inputting.
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I think it's more about ease of use and limiting the amount of customer support you have to hire.

I can't imagine many people wanting to spend a few hours of their weekend configuring a printer.
 
Pc hardware specifically yes.

I remember say 15-20 years ago your PC lasting about 2 years then being basically completely obsolete.

You had a Pentium 75 then a Pentium 500 only a few years later which was several magnitudes better.

in comparison, I had my Sandybridge i7 -2600k for 9-10 years, only replaced at the end of 2020, and it was still running the likes of Red Dead 2 at a reasonable frame rate.

to be fair, you could probably just about get by on one of those today.

Also with games I agree with an earlier post, specifically the original Half-Life was really groundbreaking, and don't forget all the mods that came with it, Counter -Strike etc.

Go look at the Steam statistics for online player count and guess what game is still top after all these years, or at least a variation of that game.
 
Technology improvements used to be about delivering a better product, as technology improved, the product could be made to do more and become more desirable or improve your experience or make things more convenient.

Now its about making money, how can we change this product (not improve) to get people to buy it. NEW iphone, now with rounded corners! look at all the cool people on this advert, they all have one!
 
AI will change a lot of things - Siri and Google Assistant have already made huge improvements in how we use our tech
Battery tech will hopefully make renewables even more viable and will likely change motoring forever
Internet speeds have made a huge difference to the availability and experience of online gaming (hi, HangTime), but most of the cool stuff is still limited to urban areas
Healthcare providers are rolling out remote monitoring products, which will hopefully improve outcomes

It's great to be able to spend cash on a new PC/laptop, phone or TV and expect it to last 4-6 years, rather than 1-2 before being obsolete. My first gaming PC had USB ports that didn't work properly as it was a new technology and the implementation was poor. Things are much better now and I'm certainly less gadget orientated than I was 20-25 years ago - mostly due to competing priorities on my time and money.

The TLDR is that rapid improvements to tech are exciting but can be frustrating and expensive, but there are still areas for refinement.
 
A lot of stuff has plateaued big time in the past ten years.

Mobile phones from 2009 to around 2017 went up massive leaps and bounds. Now it is all just diminishing returns. Someone needs to reinvent the phone so it is like a projector from a watch or something.

Same with gaming. Xbox 360 was peak era for gaming. You had everything. Yes stuff might be more sparkly now but BF3, MW2 are still enjoyable today and I can quite happily pick up 360 titles and play them through without thinking it needs better graphics. (ME and Dead Space for example).

The good thing is it is cheaper for the audience to get into a hobby. You compare a PC from 1998 to 2003 and the PC from 1998 could barely play any game in 2003. Yet a PC from 2017 could quite easily play today's games at a decent rate.
 
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bainbridge said:
I guess mobile phones are now a developed product, such as a bicycle or a toaster.

Maybe it's too risky to invest in pure research to find out what completely new technology can be invented and it's a safer bet to incrementally improve existing tech?
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Funny you mention bicycle as I think it's one area where tech has really been revolutionary.
Going from a normal mountain bike to an e-mountain bike was like the first time I tried VR, it was amazing! The latest emerging tech now is a belt driven system with an internal gearbox, electronic and even automatic gear shifting, wireless dropper post, ABS brakes yet it's still a pedal bike.
 
Technology is boring now I totally agree. The big gripe I have is the software and the legacy nature of products. Just because your business plan was crap and you rushed out your software that was coded so badly you cant keep up older products is suddenly the consumers problem.

Everything needs to have a 15-20 year life, don't care about updates as such (unless is security focussed) but the product should maintain the same functionality on the day I bought to the day i throw it in the bin. That includes the background servers etc.
 
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