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People expect technology to suck because it sucks

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Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#21

Post by throwanem »

Loughla wrote: post #4

This might sound like a flippant question, but it's not. Isn't the point of tech to tinker? When did problems become problems that you shouldn't try to solve, instead of a reason to learn about the tech? I've really been down about technology lately, after working with 6-12th graders. They just don't get how anything works, if it doesn't immediately work for them. They don't want to take it apart and figure it out. T…

> Isn't the point of tech to tinker?

No.

We claim to be building tools, but nothing we build operates like a tool does. My hammers don't randomly lose their heads. My vise grips don't every so often fly apart into a collection of oddly shaped bits of metal, and require I painstakingly reassemble them by hand. My benchtop power supply doesn't require constant calibration. Even my oscilloscope, which actually is a computer that just happens to be built for signal processing, functions in a way that's predictable and reliable. And if any of these did misbehave in the ways I describe, I'd regard them as unfit for purpose and, while I would likely be able to repair them and put them back in service, the ideal outcome would be replacement with something that didn't require the same effort just to make it able to do the job it is sold as being able to do. Tools exist for the sake of making other tasks easier, not as a source of tasks in themselves.

There is definitely failure happening here. But it's not on the part of people who are upset to have been told what they're buying are tools, only to have them turn out not to be.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#22

Post by jacobr1 »

Loughla wrote: post #4

This might sound like a flippant question, but it's not. Isn't the point of tech to tinker? When did problems become problems that you shouldn't try to solve, instead of a reason to learn about the tech? I've really been down about technology lately, after working with 6-12th graders. They just don't get how anything works, if it doesn't immediately work for them. They don't want to take it apart and figure it out. T…

I'm not sure there is an agreed point. The industrial revolution is still young. Most people made a substantial portion of the goods they use historically. Even when trading for goods, it often was for intermediate inputs like cloth rather than fully finished items.

But even then, I would say no, tinkering was the point of hobbyist tech, or professional/craftsman tech. But the recent history of "consumer goods" hasn't been about tinkering ... I think the key difference in the past few decades is maintenance. Even in the era of consumer goods in the past hundred years or so, maintaining your possessions was expected. Some might pay a professional for specialized work, but since most things were maintained a large fraction of the work fell on the owner ... and this also leads to tinkering, not as an expectation, but an outcome.

Consider darning your socks, or sharpening your hatchet. Shining ones shoes or replacing a sparkplug.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#23

Post by lallysingh »

Joker_vD wrote: post #12
lallysingh wrote: post #6

I'll point out that many of these annoyances don't have equivalents on the command-line. And the annoyances I do have on the command line I can mostly work around with wrapping things in shell scripts, aliases, or functions. It's nice to have a simple interface and high extensibility on top of it.

Well, then there is also the annoyance of having way too many wrappers to wrap your head around, and it's one that I personally encounter somewhat regularly. Still has not figured out how to deal with that one.

Use names that you can find easily via tab completion from what you were thinking about.

E.g., all my scripts for fixing transient problems are ~/bin/fix-*.sh

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#25

Post by 6_past_30_til_6 »

Loughla wrote: post #4

This might sound like a flippant question, but it's not. Isn't the point of tech to tinker? When did problems become problems that you shouldn't try to solve, instead of a reason to learn about the tech? I've really been down about technology lately, after working with 6-12th graders. They just don't get how anything works, if it doesn't immediately work for them. They don't want to take it apart and figure it out. T…

The point of technology is to enable us to do things that we either can’t or don’t want to do. This ranges from simple time savings (don’t want to do/make things easier) to things we literally can’t do (high precision timing for example).

Tinkering is a hobby, your hobby.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#26

Post by thebean11 »

morley wrote: post #17

I think tech is other people. Tech doesn't suck because technology is bad: it sucks because life is complicated, and other people are prone to mistakes, or prioritizes that don't align with yours, or have limited attention. Case in point: I don't particularly like the design of this site, as I find it difficult to look at (even if I abstractly can see how the color choice is bold). The night mode toggle seems even ha…

> I don't particularly like the design of this site, as I find it difficult to look at

As someone who didn't realize I had a permanent eye floater until browsing this site, I agree.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#27

Post by Loughla »

morceauxdebois wrote: post #9
Loughla wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain further, please. I don't think I'm following you.

It's one thing to tinker with Linux to learn how the OS works and another thin to troubleshoot it just as you are about to give a presentation.

Got it. Thanks.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#28

Post by martythemaniak »

It "sucks" because we're constantly changing stuff and making new stuff. We do this because we want new stuff. There are plenty of industries where things don't change quickly and people complain about everything taking forever.

To use an analogy, you can have things work like NASA's SLS Rocket - expensive, slow, well-thought-out and reliable. Or you can have things work like SpaceX - impressive pace, bleeding edge, occasional explosion. There's no happy medium, so careful what you wish for. I'd rather deal with all the author's problems than deal with a Nokia phone.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#30

Post by katsume3 »

I try to train my systems to behave just the way I like them. It's no different than coding: you are bending tech to your will. I don't see the difference in configuring a brand new Virtual Machine and that of coding a new piece of software. For me, the definition of non-sucky technology is the ability to configure, tinker, and otherwise mess with systems to make them do your bidding.

This is why I love computers, because no two computers are in the same state, and I always laugh using other people's computers because you can be sure they have configured it in a weird idiosyncratic way, entirely different than one's own configuration.

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