Latest Technology, good or bad ?..

Paddy20

You know, there are days when I feel like throwing all the latest modern technology in my home, out of the window.

I have just about every modern gadget, you could imagine, including large LCD/HD TV/Computer monitor, Satellite with around 3000 channels from all over our imperfect world, the latest telephones etc.

Yet, I honestly am not sure if I should keep what I have, or go back to ordinary basic radio, and a tv with just a few channels, as well as starting to read good books again ?.. I am beginning to wonder if human being's are starting to suffer from technological overload.

I would be interested to know if others, are beginning to yearn for the simple things in life, or is it that my age group are finding it hard to keep up with modern technology.

Is it improving human relations, or detracting us from basic human relationships, family, friends and real life human interaction ?... with nature, I well remember someone telling me when I was young, " too always take time out to smell the rose's !"

What is your view, or am I alone in feeling that technology is not helping humanity as it should ?...

P. :cool:

Tall Tom

From an outsider's point of view, I honestly feel that today's modern communication technology is interfering with human interactions. I'm talking about mobiles, instant messenger programs and e-mail. People should go back to the old face-to-face interactions. I had a coworker who grew up as a "gamer" (one who spent his childhood sitting in a room playing video games by himself) and he had the some of the worst people skills that I have ever seen. Rude and crass to everyone he interacted with, including Senior VP's. I was embarrassed to be around the guy.

The High Def TV's are nice though. I don't own one, but a few friends do and they are amazing. Passive technology like this is acceptable. We now have satellite radio in the States and that is awesome. I soon plan on signing up for one of them (Sirius radio). Our FM radio stations are getting really bad - too many commercials and really bad programming.

nanook

Paddy, once again good topic.

In relation to technology. How did we live with the influx of gadgets that "enrich our lives". Take for example the mobile phone, lets think back to its introduction (we are not talking that long ago). How did we live our lives before then, how did we conduct business before then.
The whole point of mobiles is that before their introduction we lived, the world got on with being the world and everyone survived. Take mobile communication out of the loop now and there would be uproar, business would collapse and the blisters would heal from the texting freaks.

With my work it is compulsary to have a phone, people need to contact me, I not important or anything but i cover a couple of areas in my company. If there was no phone, no email etc.. then would my job still be here, i would like to think we could survive but i really dont think we would.

By the way, i am not, no way, handing back my HD Lcd tv, i love it too much along with all the other gadgets and contraptions i hold sooooooo dear to my heart

Black Swan

My TV broke about a year ago and I decided to do without one. Occasionally I will visit a pizza place or a bar to watch a football game during season, or see Jay Lenno a couple of times for a laugh, but other than that, I do not miss it. I certainly do not miss the frequent advertising or high bills for cable.

deman

Paddy20 wrote:

You know, there are days when I feel like throwing all the latest modern technology in my home, out of the window.

I have just about every modern gadget, you could imagine, including large LCD/HD TV/Computer monitor, Satellite with around 3000 channels from all over our imperfect world, the latest telephones etc.

Paddy, if you really do want to thrown them out your window, I'll take all that stuff off you

ednwireland

yeh i know what you mean i actually build a lot of servers and networks for people and they always want instant access (blackberrys webmail mail over the phone ETC). i never see much productivity gain past basic email and word processing, spreadsheets. what i do see is lots of people working longer and longer hours (in alot of cases they are just keeping n touch with the office but actually end up working much longer)

and dont get me started on tv's old telly starts immediatly new telly (still 10 years old mind but great sound and picture quality and 28inch screen so big enough for widescreen letterbox) takes about 5s.
analogue tv transmission i can record one channel and watch another digital tv freeview and satellite i watch the channel i'm recording unless i go for multi lnb and sky +. yeh and if i autoview two consecutive programs on my vold skybox it falls over on the second recording.
how is a media center pc and advancement over an old video recorder -in terms of user interface (not in terms of pausing live recordings watching one recording whilst recording another) all i want to do is put the time in and get it to record everything else is usually useless extras.
at the moment there is an awful lot of technology for technologies sake and very little work done on ensureing bug free software (we'll fix in the next service pack) and good gui's because thats the expensive bit we'll fix it if loads of people complain about it.

i think the basic problem is everything is now cost driven, its basically the only thing people can compare on everything else is so hidden in marketing speak you cant really make comparisons.

god i feel better for that

byte

ednwireland wrote:

at the moment there is an awful lot of technology for technologies sake and very little work done on ensureing bug free software (we'll fix in the next service pack) and good gui's because thats the expensive bit we'll fix it if loads of people complain about it.

i think the basic problem is everything is now cost driven, its basically the only thing people can compare on everything else is so hidden in marketing speak you cant really make comparisons.

Well said. I couldn't agree more.