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What the topic says...


The other day, I ran into the most hilarious technology situation ever.

I'm on a robotics team, and we like playing music while we work. I brought my zune one day and starting playing some music off of it through some speakers, and one of the team members comes up to change the music, and slides his finger all over the screen till he says, "--Name--, how do you get this thing to work????"

Apparently touchscreens are the common thing today, and buttons are the thing of yesterday. I couldn't help laughing at the guy so hard, and what's even stranger is this guy is no idiot, and he wasn't joking.


Do you see any ways in which technology is progressing too fast? Do you have any funny/odd situations that arise from technology?

Sometimes when Im bored, Ill go hang with my dad, and just watch him try and operate.....well anything remotely technical. Hes such an old school guy its scary, he can fix a car that is literally in pieces all over the place, but his TV remote just boggles him. Sometimes we will be talking, and he will try to mute it, but either turns off the tv, or somehow turns on his stereo. Thats the best because then he panics and starts hitting more wrong buttons


Also I still have a walkman. Yes, a walkman, that plays cassettes. Sometimes Ill bring it out to watch my nieces an nephews gaze in wonder as to how this bloody thing works.

I think that as more people get more technically savvy, the acceptable level of complexity in a consumer grade product increases. The Zune is not a simple device.

No I feel technology isnt adavancing quick enough.

Alot the things being produced/invented is stuff for consumers not for the good of humanity or the world.

I feel we are not doing as well as I would hope in inventing stuff to help with global warmng, Poverty, Medical, etc.

If an idea has not profit value its usually not as important as something that can make money which is sad.

Well, in my case I actually did the same thing for our digital camera. I know that it is not touchscreen but I got used to my phone so I incidentally began pointing on the screen and I wonder why it wasn't working. Good thing only my cousin saw me doing it and she said, I thought you have to press the buttons for that to work. Stupid me. hahahah

Phryxis wrote:I think that as more people get more technically savvy, the acceptable level of complexity in a consumer grade product increases. The Zune is not a simple device.

It's not simple, and hardly anyone uses them. I don't know if that is connected at all. But then my mother can't operate her iPod.

What tends to happen is that the majority of consumers simply ignore the advanced features and functions of a lot of gadgets, because they are too difficult to access.

Interface designers call it the Blinking 00:00 problem, referring to the days when lots of people never set the clock on their VCR because the interface was too difficult.

If you look at a typical digital compact camera, it will have about a dozen buttons giving access to several dozen menus. This for a point and shoot camera!

Personally I am not at all tech-phobic, and I'm a keen photographer. However I really dislike the complexity of the interface on modern cameras compared to my old-fashioned film cameras.

I have found that most consumer technology that includes a manual, tempered with some patience, can be solved in a matter of minutes. I think it boils down to the instant gratification culture. "If I can't have it now, it's not worth waiting for."

It's just a generational thing most of the time. I'm usually the whipping boy in setting up any form of technology within the family. I wonder if it will ever come to a point where it advances so much again that we become redundant, and have to look to our younger peers to help us through.

It always helps to read the manual.

The difference in cameras is that any mostly manual film camera can be operated by someone with a core knowledge of photography, while a digital camera requires you to learn the interface and controls of that specific model.

There are usually strong commonalities with other cameras by the same manufacturer, but your knowledge about the operating procedure is less transferrable.

A lot is probably due to these things 'overshooting' the needs of a user.

A person buys or 'hires' something to do a job; anything it does more is superfluous and anything that stops the person doing what he wanted with it is detrimental.

The problem with digital cameras is three-fold.

1. The extra stuff is things you do need to know about, like how to compensate for backlighting. People end up with crappy pics anyway. Though in many circumstances the exposure is very goo.

2. The buttons are too small. I am fed up with pressing menu buttons on my cameras when trying to just actually take a picture.

3. Eats batteries.

4. Slow start-up and focus time.

There are a lot of types of digital cameras. It sounds like you're describing "lower end consumer grade digital cameras."

In reality, there's pretty much no such thing as "digital cameras" anymore, there's just cameras (which are digital).

The really nice ones don't suffer from the issues you're describing.

I have an Olympus ePen-2, which is far from a lower end consumer grade camera, and it has the same problem with buttons and menu options as my Panasonic D-xxx.

It does have a manual focus option, and an auxiliary viewfinder, which is nice.

I have a Sony alpha-700 at work, which is a semi-pro D-SLR. The menus and buttons are more handleable on that, simply because it is larger and has more surface area.

I have concluded the ideal digicam for me would be a Leica M9. Unfortunately the body alone costs nearly £5,000.

George Spiggott wrote:

I was thinking of that immedately when I read this technology stuff. Lol

Kilkrazy wrote:

Personally I am not at all tech-phobic, and I'm a keen photographer. However I really dislike the complexity of the interface on modern cameras compared to my old-fashioned film cameras.

This is why I quite like my dslr. Apart from a few extra buttons on the back, the controls are mostly the same as the film version of the camera. All of the controls you need to use are close to where your thumbs or fingers will normally sit using the camera.
Lenses are interchangeable, flash swaps across with no dramas.

Can't pay me to use most of the compact Point-O-Shooties. I like a camera that actually takes up space in my hands, that has an OPTICAL zoom.

My niece tried to make my walkman work and failed. She wanted to know how big the hard drive was and where the usb socket was on it.

(To be fair, I was 'archiving' some old music from it onto my computer, so to all intents, it did look like it was being interfaced. I was just piping the audio out through the soundcard so that I could rip it.)