It's the future, aren't things meant to get better?
Jon Shute | Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 7:39PM I used to be something of a god of technology. I could make anything work first time. All interfaces were obvious to my mind, and nothing ever failed badly. That was in the past-times though. A golden age of technology. Now we’re in the future it’s a different story.
My iPhone just crashed and now says that it contains no music. Usually it says that after syncing with iTunes, but this time it came up just from opening the iPod software on it. It never used to to do this.
Maybe it’s not just me. Does technology actuallly get worse with each update? Did we peak somewhere around the turn of the millennium and are we now on a downwards slope to the new dark ages*?
Games consoles used to be more reliable. Now we have an effort by Microsoft that falls over at the drop of a hat (does anybody not know somebody who has had at least one fail?), and Sony isn’t much better with the rate they seem to be falling to bits. I actually had to unplug my PS3 slim when we recorded the last show as it made too much noise on standby now and was being picked up by a mic. That’s insane, it was on standby! And don’t get me started on how slow the XMB on the PS3 is, or how it always used to be easy to play games back in the day as I’d just stick the disc in the drive, now I have to dig through nasty Xbox menus to play something I used to have on an older platform on a disc, tape or cartridge.
Blu-ray films are no better. Many of them have a progress bar when they start to show you how much they’ve loaded as they go off to the internet and look for updates. Who thought that was a good idea? DVDs never had progress bars. Updates have made technology worse again.
I predict the end of civilization as we know it. The next round of consoles will not even be able to play games, the iPhone will not be able to make phone calls (insert how will we tell comment here) and our laptops will all explode whenever we even think of using them.
Somebody print out Wikipedia while we still can, we will need its knowledge of farming and metal working in the future after technology fails us.
If anybody wants me I’ll be playing fallout as survival research.
* The historian in me would like to point out that in reality that isn’t what the dark ages were and continuing this idea is wrong and I shouldn’t do it. The writer in me is lazy though and likes an easy time and has promised the historian side of me beer if I let it slide this one time.
Jon 
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Reader Comments (6)
Related to this is the profileration of software in everything, from pedals and braking systems on cars (e.g. Toyota), to boilers, toasters and breathalysers.
Commentators on software have expressed concern at this - not least the shockingly bad quality of some of it. And with the market for "intelligent" devices growing steadily bigger, it's only going to get worse.
Among devices, like consoles and phones, which have long had a degree of processing power, the race to add more features has meant more complexity - and inevitably, slower operation, and a greater chance of something going wrong.
Despite all this, I remain optimistic - not least because, for all their flaws, I find it wondrous that these hideously complicated devices work at all.
So the question is: when will we have flying cars?
It's an age thing. Welcome to the old and grumpy you. :-P
I tried to print Wikipedia, but then someone changed an article. /cry
Everything is getting so complicated now. Technology is now so complicated, it's too hard to write proper software for. Hence all the bugs and stuff that doesn't work right :(.
Only apple technology gets worse with updates. No, seriously.
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/30/apple_to_ipod_owners.html
I've been lucky so far. I don't know anyone personally who's Xbox has died. I've managed 2 RRODs, and a system crash, all remedied through restarting it! (1 RROD was caused by a PSP wireless network being active while using wireless controllers. You think Sony is stooping to sabotage?).
That said my PS2's DVD drive died on it's arse, and promted me to buy an Xbox(1) which never ever failed on me! The drive on my Xbox 360 seems to be in the process of dieing atm. Had to exchange my copy of Bayonetta recently so I could finish it (Mirror smooth disk is unreadable!?!?!?!?!?!?). Oh and this also made me notice that Microsoft appear to have added the ability to open the disk tray remotely (apologies if this feature has been available for a while) suggesting that there are enough users needing to constantly eject and close teh tray to get the damn machine to realise that the disk is a game not a sodding DVD! (If it didn't happen so often seeing my xbox tell me to put the game disk in an xbox not a dvd player would be somewhat amusing)
However for me it is the multiplayer PC games market that has been really causing me a headache! Why in this day and age should I have to open ports to be able to play with friends. Borderlands was criminal for this, and as a real slap in the face to the consumer, they patched it so that you no longer need a crapload of ports open, and took 3 to 4 months over updating it!
So, yes technology sucks. Let's go back to wattle and daub huts, and horses!