What if our tech is good enough?
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What if our tech is good enough?
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#2Yet now we find ourselves in an impossible position. In almost every sphere, the technology we have is so good that any improvements can only be incremental.
I don't believe this for a second. I'm sure people said the same thing about smartphones before the iPhone. Yes, some categories of technology are mature, but innovation is also about the creation of entirely new categories that we can't currently foresee.
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#3Yet now we find ourselves in an impossible position. In almost every sphere, the technology we have is so good that any improvements can only be incremental. I don't believe this for a second. I'm sure people said the same thing about smartphones before the iPhone. Yes, some categories of technology are mature, but innovation is also about the creation of entirely new categories that we can't currently foresee.
I agree. I can recall a time when I thought I would never need a hard disk bigger than 20GB and went "meh" when 40GB hard disks came out.
upgrading from an iPod that stores your entire music collection to one that can store your collection twice is nowhere near as exciting.
It is, because my collection is now twice as large.
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#4The premise of this article indicated a massive lack of research or forethought. The author is absolutely confusing "what exists" with "what is readily made commercially available to the public". A few hours of browsing tech blogs would make it very clear how many significant advances are made. He talks about Blu-Ray like it's cutting edge. Meanwhile we have companies putting out 3D TV sets this year. Digital cameras really can't get any better? Last time I checked, there still aren't any small, inexpensive consumer 3D data acquisition devices yet. And the jump from dial-up to broadband is no bigger than the jump from our anemic 6-8MB connections to the 1GB/s service that Korea is building out as we speak.
The title of this should really be, "Why don't people realize that our tech still sucks?"
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#5Moving from video to DVD-quality camcorders was another giant leap, but the difference between 720p HD and 1080p HD is only apparent if your TV is the size of a bus.
That's a bit misleading. There was never any transition from 720p to 1080p.
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#6Even if it is good enough, the perception of what is good enough is constantly changing. At a point in the past the steam engine was probably considered good enough.
I think it would be a dangerous thing for the technology industry to fall into the trap of thinking what we have is good enough and killing innovation. Even if the product is good enough there has to be a driving force to constantly improve.
There is lots of possibility for computing that just isn't attainable with current machines. Things that probably weren't even thought of when we were back a stage from where we are now.
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#7The sweet thing is that it's only getting started.
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#8The premise of this article indicated a massive lack of research or forethought. The author is absolutely confusing "what exists" with "what is readily made commercially available to the public". A few hours of browsing tech blogs would make it very clear how many significant advances are made. He talks about Blu-Ray like it's cutting edge. Meanwhile we have companies putting out 3D TV sets this year . Digital camera…
With respect, the article's point is not that tech can't improve, but that those improvements aren't needed. His expression "good enough" means "good enough for a particular purpose". Sure it can be improved; but it doesn't matter because it's good enough. Consider his example of netbooks: less powerful but more demand.
You're taking improvement in technology; he's talking demand for that improvement. Sure, you can make a car that will do 200mph - and what's the market for that? How about a car that uses less fuel, has crumple zones and airbags, easier to park, looks cool, feels great to drive, accelerates well and has seats that smell like leather?
You can buy an 8 inch hard disk drive with a hugely larger capacity than a 3.5 inch one you have, and that is also cheaper per GB. But you don't buy the 8 inch one, because the smaller drives have enough capacity for your needs: they are "good enough". Because of lower fixed costs, they are also cheaper (for that capacity). And they'll fit in your laptop.
I concede that the expression "good enough" is misleading. He's using it in the sense of "The Innovators Dilemma". It's the basis of each disruptive revolution in computers, and it takes almost everyone by surprise. We keep on improving aspect X, and everyone loves it! Until one day, they stop buying it. How come? I don't know, let's just make X even better!
The idea is that people buy something based on a mix of benefits, things like features, performance, reliability, convenience, and price. Saying that one of these attributes is not "good enough", is a way of saying that "there is demand for more of it". The vendor who can supply the best improvement, in terms of the current mix of demand, wins. It's usually seen as one key benefit, and the rest are secondary. That's where the competition is focussed. And this keeps on going for years, decades. Everybody works at improving that aspect, because people demand more of it. But if it eventually saturates the demand for it, people can't use a faster car, they can't absorb more capacity: it finally is "good enough". This is another way of saying that there is now demand for more of some other attribute instead of that one. And competition shifts to that attribute.
This plays out all the time in technology markets: e.g. once it's fast enough for their needs, people prefer to buy something cheaper instead of faster. Sure, it can be faster, but that's irrelevant if no one wants it.
Fortunately, the demand doesn't usually disappear, but switches to somewhere else, so there is still demand for tech improvements - just different ones.
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#9The premise of this article indicated a massive lack of research or forethought. The author is absolutely confusing "what exists" with "what is readily made commercially available to the public". A few hours of browsing tech blogs would make it very clear how many significant advances are made. He talks about Blu-Ray like it's cutting edge. Meanwhile we have companies putting out 3D TV sets this year . Digital camera…
However, you are confusing 'what will become available' with 'what consumers will buy when it becomes available'. The author doesn't say nothing 'better' will become available. He is claiming that consumers may not buy it, because the advantage of the new product over the old one is minimal. He is, in effect, claiming that many more current R&D efforts will, in the near future, turn out to be bad investments.
When purchasing a new product, the perceived advantage is always weighed against its additional cost, having to let go of something one 'is familiar with', backward compatability with other possessions that are retained, etc. If the manufacturer does not succeed in convincing consumers that there is something to be gained by 'upgrading', they will not upgrade.
Now I concede that, at the moment, you are probably right: lots of new and improved technologies that will hit the markets the next ten years will be perceived as having sufficient advantage (to replace currently owned products) and they will be purchased.
However, in the long run, I think there must come a point when the author's argument will turn out to be valid. That's when new technologies just do not offer enough advantage to be profitable in the consumer market. Of course, every technology faces this problem at some point: it reaches a stable end-of-life fase and manufacturers deal with it in various ways. Some old types of CPU, radio's and the lightbulb are interesting case studies. The main question is whether there will come a point when this holds for the majority of technological innovations, in such a way that the consumer market for 'new' products vanishes all across the 'technological' consumer product market.
Re: What if our tech is good enough?
#10The author of the article is confusing technology advancement with "consumer product demand" under an economic recession.
Aside from slowing of initial productivity gains in the broad application of commoditized digital mathematics (i.e. computers) to human endeavors, technology growth is actually accelerating in many areas including: biology, materials science, pure mathematics (algorithms are actually a technology), metrology (think 'Large Hadron Collider'), and tribology (lubrication, and friction).
The wrongly attributed "640k is all anyone will ever need" quote comes to mind. What a horrid piece of "jurinalism".