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Technological Complacency
By sparky | March 2, 2009
It seems that as society has progressed, people have become lazy – complacent.
No longer are we required to think innovatively to solve problems – we’ve become relient on machines to work it out for us. A classic example was in a historic show I watched a few years back.
Their goal was to try replicate how the Ancient Romans built a huge Dock that went out into a harbour. The difficulty was in creating a machine to place these huge pillars into the water, hammering them down somehow at the right angle, then building the supports and planks on top, move the machine out, rinse-repeat.
These days they’d just use cranes or something to that effect. But the historical team had to resort to innovation- using only materials found in that time period. They worked it out in the end, but it did demonstrate how much our thinking had changed, and our relience on machines became evident.
Things in the Techno World aren’t much different these days. It seems that ‘Hardware is cheap’ = ‘rough enough is good enough’. In a recent Security Now Podcast (185a) the presenters were talking about how in the early days of computing, memory was expensive. They’d constantly be trying to re-write their code to make it leaner and more effecient.
Window’s Vista is a good example of modern day thinking: Just throw more resources at it, it’ll be fine.
Another area that will be spurred on due to recent economic issues is the games industry. No longer can they just turn out ‘crap’, it seems they’ll be focussing on creating more ‘quality’ products, less in ‘quantity’.
I’ve not been much of a gamer in recent years, largely because I didnt feel any of the games looked or felt any different to what’s become the ‘norm’. Even Mirrors Edge was quite disappointing: A case of interesting idea, and good design, but limitations in gameplay, and a story line which weakens as the game continues, leaves you feeling “Why did I bother?”. They couldn’t do that 15- 20 years ago. They had to develop games that would generate continued interest for continued revenue.
Perhaps its nostalgic of me, but I really do believe that things were better in the past. Largely because people have just become lazy and, well, complacent.
Topics: Hardware, Principles, Programming, Software | 3 Comments »
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 am
Also, games from 15 years ago where near on impossible to finish. These days if a game is too difficult to finish, they modify it so that everyone can get their screaming orgasam at the end of it.
Like in Half-Life Episode 1 (or was it 2?) where the crab-head-men attack in droves in the underground mineshaft – players in the initial public release found it too difficult to pass, so they released a patch to make it easier for Joe to pass so he can get his hardon at the end of the game.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 am
Just to clarify, after re-reading my above comment, I think that games should be very challenging and if they’re too easy to finish, then meh.
Admittedly Half-Life is a challenging game in parts, but so many other games are not.
Even Peggle is reasonably easy to finish the campaign – it took me two or three days of downtime at work. It’s a lot harder to earn all the medals, but not many people bother collecting all the medals.
April 19th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
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