Two random thoughts

[pozorvlak]

1. I read somewhere (probably Paul Graham's site, or possibly Cory Doctorow's) a while ago that technology always tends to evolve in the following pattern: there is an existing technology. Some new technology comes along that is inferior in every respect except one: convenience. Abandon vinyl for these nasty cassette things? Abandon hand-illuminated manuscripts for these barely-readable and probably heretical printed books? Abandon the horse for these noisy, dangerous, expensive cars? Abandon CDs, with their lovely sound and fascinating label art, for tinny-sounding MP3s? You must be joking. Yet the new technology takes off, relegating the old tech to a niche, and over time comes to match and usually exceed the quality of the old one.
   
   I've become obsessed for a while (probably since the Edinburgh fringe) with duct and gaffer tape (you may have noticed this). Why are these fallible technologies so often imbued with mystical significance? Why do people boast that they can solve any problem with them, make tuxedos out of them, compare them to the Force? I think it's to do with convenience. Gaffer tape's not actually that effective as an adhesive or a binding agent, but it's a hell of a lot more convenient than making mortice-and-tenon joints every time you want to put things together, and you don't have to learn to tie complicated knots like you do with ropes.
   
   Put these two thoughts together, and you get the following conclusion: in the future, everything will be made with gaffer tape. Sounds frightful, right? But it's not, because it will be really good gaffer tape. No doubt made with fabric spun from synthesized spider-silk or even carbon nanotubes, covered with adhesives that can hold massive weights yet can release their hold on command (cos the tape will have tiny tiny computers woven into it, and will be collected wirelessly to the Internet), covered with remotely-alterable display pixels so it can look like anything you want, etc.


2. When buying my camo trousers, it occurred to me that, while Army gear is seriously suboptimal for most people who do outdoors stuff (who want to be highly visible if they have an accident), it's probably pretty good for hunters/stalkers/whatever, who want to be invisible to their prey. But then I thought that camo gear is designed to be invisible to the human eye, not the deer eye. The characteristics of the eyes of various prey animals must be known - has anyone designed camouflage patterns that are tailored to deer, or to boar, or tigers(*)? Bonus points if they're not invisible to humans, to cut down on friendly fire.

Right, now for some actual work. Great.

* Obviously, I don't condone big game hunting for fun. But tigers do become man-eaters, and then killing them becomes something you've got to do.

Comments

[the-barlow.livejournal.com]

I once spent half a Cecilian committee meeting sitting right next to a guy who didn't see me until I said something because I was wearing my camouflage trousers.

It seems that camo even works in the QM!

E
x

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Wow. Urban camouflage...

[countess-rezia.livejournal.com]

I read this and thought: But everything is already made and held together with gaffer tape! And then I remembered that this is because I work in theatre and not the real world.

So in the future, the real world will become more like theatre....sounds bon.

[elvum.livejournal.com]

DVDs - better picture quality than VHS tapes; less convenient in some respects (region coding).
Television - took off because it was better than radio, and less convenient - you can't watch television while driving, for example.
CDs - *they're* what replaced Vinyl, not cassettes IMO, and they offer better sound quality *and* more convenience. Audiophiles will hate me for saying this, but for 99.9% of the population, their CDs sound better than any LPs they may have.
Mobile phones - pretty much sold purely for convenience, and not significantly worse than landlines in any way that I can think of.

Basically, I don't buy the theory. :-) For any given technology you can probably think of one way in which it is worse than its predecessors and one way in which it is more convenient. I think it would be fairer to say that convenience is probably the most important driver for consumer take-up of new technologies, and that retrograde steps in other aspects are sometimes insufficiently important to prevent this.

Incidentally, I got two pairs of cargoes in Topman for £20 last weekend - possibly worth checking.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

DVDs are smaller and lighter than VHS tapes - I think that helps on the convenience front. Mobiles - the early ones had dreadful sound quality. We're into the later, "overtaking the legacy tech" stage with them.

But yeah, it's not a completely accurate theory. I think there is some truth in it, though. Your summary - "convenience is probably the most important driver for consumer take-up of new technologies, and retrograde steps in other aspects are sometimes insufficiently important to prevent this" - sounds right to me.

Cargoes - ta! Now, to find a Topman...