The time has come to begin a blog, so here it is. First up, I'll be a bit radical and controversial.
Most blogs are about technology - new, old, future, latest developments, research. But how do we decide what technology to develop? Is it really working for us, to its potential? In some ways, its great eg. blogs. In other ways its underwhelming eg. there seems to be an endless production line of gadgets with accompanying marketing extolling the life changing effect it will have if you go buy it.
I find myself a little dissatisfied. After buying my first mobile phone back in 1993 I have never needed been convinced to upgrade to a phone with fancier features. Simple voice, SMS, and an address book are really all I use. Some 5 or 6 upgrades later and I still see nothing compelling to convince me to buy a fully featured latest model phone. Phone companies want me to spend more per month. In the end, I'm just not seeing enough value in their services to go beyond a certain level of $/month.
It seems to me the discussion of the benefits technology can bring needs to be taken to a higher level. If the effort put into developing gadgets of dubious value was instead concentrated on solving the really annoying/irritating/frustrating problems of the world, we may just succeed in making our lives better.
Are there people out there actively trying to solve the things that annoy us the most, fixing them once-and-for-all? I'd be grateful if research funding went into some of these problems:
- Stopping people from shooting and blowing each other up
- Proving or disproving the feasibility of politicians promises
- Stopping the proliferation of graffiti onto all the flat surfaces of the world
- Clean water for all
- Clean energy for all
- Get the trains running on time
- Preventing traffic jams
BTW - I'm not suggesting this type of research isn't happening, I'm just wondering if the same amount of creative energy and research $$ is being directed to these types of problem areas.
Perhaps compromises can be found - maybe we need a wearable gadget that records individual's movements, then uploads them to a supercomputer, so an analysis can be performed to find patterns that would be used as input into better transport network design. This type of rigour is theoretically possible with the latest technology, but is it actually being used?
We seem to have a wealth of talent in the world for crafting technological solutions to problems. What would it take to divert their energies from the largely trivial to the truly useful?
