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

I don't think it's an age thing, at least when it comes to PC hardware. You could have a PC with components in it from 10 years ago still somehow managing modern games, or being a useful machine. It makes all the latest and greatest seem less exciting.
The CPU space is an area where things can seem exciting, for me it only seems exciting in the bar graphs I look at, as a bog standard i5 does nicely for me. :D
GPUs and releasing a new model with similar performance, and the same or slightly lower price isn't setting my pants on fire...

AI/Machine learning and lower power chips powering handheld gaming PCs are the main area where it's still truly interesting, for me.
 
FoxEye said:
AI is the only really interesting (potentially game-changing) technology that I'm aware of. Everything else is just iteration.
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This, Ai is the first thing in about 15 years that it truly new and exciting that we as a public can take part in (the last was the original iPhone/Smartphones). Everything else in that time was small iterations on a yearly basis
 
dave28 said:
not for me, its just getting interesting now.

Flashlights LED`s getting incredibly bright
4K projectors getting more affordable and using laser instead of bulbs
TV picture quality improving
internet getting faster
hard drives getting HUGE and faster
phones getting better
cameras getting better
game consoles have moved on so much
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Yeah but they're all iterations of older tech. You expect it. We're talking about NEW stuff
 
For me I think it very much is an age thing, I just find myself not being that bothered by new tech anymore. I mean, ACC is pretty good in a car, and my car will actually park itself if I let it, but I tried it once and now I'm a bit meh.
If new tech somehow cures cancer and things like that then yes, maybe I'll be a bit more excited.
 
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Being a geriatric Salopian Luddite I am still mesmerised by the electric light bulb.


Most tech in Motorsport seems to be around aerodynamics or the dreadful battery powered "racing" cars. The IC engine has the odd (often literal) developments, but nothing dramatic. Killing fellow man tech seems to still conjure up some interesting if morbid developments.
 
I’ve found PC and mobile phone tech has been very iterative and evolutionary for a long time now to the point where it doesn’t really captivate my interest much these days.

VR /AR /MR developments are what really interests me these past few years.

Just bought Quest 3 and it’s stunning how quickly the tech is improving.
 
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I think stuff has got less innovative.
And we are all getting older.

Ie, phones went from green screen, to colour, to full screen in a few years. Even OS's were crazy different. And it wasn't too expensive.
Now it's just same screen + apple/android. I literally can't tell any difference between last 4-5 android generations.

I don't get new games.. Both for time, and they just seem like rehashes.
Before it was 2d, to basic 3d, to real 3d. But last decade, not much variation.

Even windows has barely changed since windows 7/vista ..before win95-win 7.. Each one was very different

Tvs are now flat and same.. Marginal Picture differences

Ooh. Another.
Music went from cassette to CD to minidisc to mp3... Now it's just streaming.


But also I'm less interested in tech now. I value time more than stuff.

So a combination of both I think
 
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I think I'd rather die than read an AI sequel to a novel conceived and written by a proper author,.

Also music went from vinyl to CD to MP3 to streaming and back to vinyl for me. Minidisk was very niche and cassettes were just an alternative to vinyl.
 
As others have already mentioned it does feel like a lot of what is coming out now seems to fall into one of 3 categories;

1. Iterative improvement, be it a tv with slightly better resolution, a pc thats a bit faster, or a car that parks itself theres a lot of stuff that's the same as what we're used to but just a little bit different with at best marginal improvements.

2. Stuff that seems to be harmful, particularly when it comes to cryptocurrencies allowing the lucky few to get fantastically wealthy by providing, well, nothing of particular utility to humanity. Another example would be drones, yes they have good uses but turns out what they're really useful for is killing each other.

3. Stuff that is just kinda meh. And for me ai currently sits in this category, it seems to promise an awful lot more than it actually delivers and its impossible to tell if it's a good thing, a bad thing, or just another fad like how 3d tv's were going to revolutionise how we enjoyed media that in a few years time we'll look back and see it for what it was. The same applies to fusion power, which as long as i can remember has promised to revolutionise our world once we get it working, which is just around the corner. Even if we crack it and it delivers everything we could ever want it to i'm not sure it isnt going to come with serious downsides that will be both new yet disturbingly familiar.

Category 1 is easy to understand, as a technology develops through people throwing every idea under the sun at it we eventually figure out the overall best way to do it or at least standardise, at some point it gets increasingly difficult to stand out and you end up with a situation where for example most mobile phones look the same and do the same things because it turns out a monolithic touch screen is the thing most people want, and manufacturers have to play around with making it slightly thinner or slightly faster or put extra complications like fingerprint sensors or wireless charging to stand out.

Category 2 is just a symptom of people's innate ability to find an angle to make their own lives a better at the expense of others, which is perhaps less a problem of the tech itself and more a problem of the people using it and sadly is never going to go away whilst humanity is recognisably human.

Category 3 methinks is the one where age comes into play, the older we get the more we see of these revolutionary ideas turn out to either not work or work but not be useful and every time it happens it makes us more cautious to trust the next revolutionary idea won't do the same. That said, it's also the category 3 tech that does sometimes go on to prove itself useful at which point it will very quickly morph into category 1 or 2 once we learn the most effective way to use it.
 
adolf hamster said:
As others have already mentioned it does feel like a lot of what is coming out now seems to fall into one of 3 categories;

1. Iterative improvement, be it a tv with slightly better resolution, a pc thats a bit faster, or a car that parks itself theres a lot of stuff that's the same as what we're used to but just a little bit different with at best marginal improvements.

2. Stuff that seems to be harmful, particularly when it comes to cryptocurrencies allowing the lucky few to get fantastically wealthy by providing, well, nothing of particular utility to humanity. Another example would be drones, yes they have good uses but turns out what they're really useful for is killing each other.

3. Stuff that is just kinda meh. And for me ai currently sits in this category, it seems to promise an awful lot more than it actually delivers and its impossible to tell if it's a good thing, a bad thing, or just another fad like how 3d tv's were going to revolutionise how we enjoyed media that in a few years time we'll look back and see it for what it was. The same applies to fusion power, which as long as i can remember has promised to revolutionise our world once we get it working, which is just around the corner. Even if we crack it and it delivers everything we could ever want it to i'm not sure it isnt going to come with serious downsides that will be both new yet disturbingly familiar.

Category 1 is easy to understand, as a technology develops through people throwing every idea under the sun at it we eventually figure out the overall best way to do it or at least standardise, at some point it gets increasingly difficult to stand out and you end up with a situation where for example most mobile phones look the same and do the same things because it turns out a monolithic touch screen is the thing most people want, and manufacturers have to play around with making it slightly thinner or slightly faster or put extra complications like fingerprint sensors or wireless charging to stand out.

Category 2 is just a symptom of people's innate ability to find an angle to make their own lives a better at the expense of others, which is perhaps less a problem of the tech itself and more a problem of the people using it and sadly is never going to go away whilst humanity is recognisably human.

Category 3 methinks is the one where age comes into play, the older we get the more we see of these revolutionary ideas turn out to either not work or work but not be useful and every time it happens it makes us more cautious to trust the next revolutionary idea won't do the same. That said, it's also the category 3 tech that does sometimes go on to prove itself useful at which point it will very quickly morph into category 1 or 2 once we learn the most effective way to use it.
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I'll go with that.

Though I would never have thought we'd see the day when super advances in tech meant that people would be discussing the complexity of the UI on the latest torch... a torch!
 
I wrote a similar post a few months ago, that we rarely get completely brand new tech these days.

The 80s and 90s were the golden age of new tech.

We're desperately in need of a new OS to rival Microsoft.
 
It's not just tech is it? Sadly part of getting older and more experienced, means that fewer things are as exciting as they used to be.
That said, nwer inovations these days are proving much harder to be as exciting from a couple of decades or so ago.
 
Probably part of getting older.

But then I look at modern cars, which so many tech glitches, unusable controls. All completely out of the bounds of most people to fix, and eye watering to repair. I don't think this is progress.
 
I dunno, I try and retain a sense of wonder about this stuff which is hard when there is so much information out there. AI is incredible and will change our lives forever. Of the smaller stuff I use every day, something like SONOS where I can easily have the same song playing in multiple different rooms of my house is the sort of thing I dreamed of as a kid. I was blown away the first time I used it. Similarly ACC on my car, I drove to Watford the other day and probably went 2 hours without touching the pedals, feeling safe for the whole time. Even AirPods are pretty mind blowing compared to the horrendous early iterations of Bluetooth headphones. It’s easy to take this stuff for granted.
 
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