[varsigma (OP)]

A question I have is, what do you think the future will be like for the average person, in terms of how much the technology they use affects what they control, y'know, otherwise?

Will kids be able to dash off an algorithm or two with the help of an AI bot, perhaps for the new IBM quantum computer on the cloud? How many people will be tech savvy, in the sense early amateur radio enthusiasts needed to be?

Will it be the same kind of exclusive club? And how many early ham radio clubs were there in Asia or Africa, what kind of tech-relativity, the West vs the Rest, would you expect in this future?

[alancalverd]

The Ancient Skeptic who resides inside my skull has noted that as "tech" advances in speed and computing power, so its applications become increasingly trivial and annoying.

If you consider yourself "tech savvy"  you probably have more computing power on your wrist than flew in the entire Apollo program, but it won't take you to the moon or enhance your life in any way. A couple of years ago I was interrupted whilst lecturing, by a nurse suddenly standing up "because my watch told me to".

Have you walked 20,000 steps today, or have you hugged your children? Which matters more?

I walked out of the airside restaurant at Belfast International airport last month because there was no visible menu: you had to download it from a QR code, order it by phone, and have it delivered to your table by a robot. Having seen how automated "milk and feed" stations work by recognising each cow's history, I presume each time you visit, your meal will be preselected according to your travel habits. I'm sure all the auto-feed "restaurants" talk to each other, so Belfast Hal will say "I see you had eggs for breakfast in Edinburgh, spent most of the  day driving, and haven't visited the toilet in the last 6 hours, so I've prescribed a high fiber mockmeat burger with a docusate and warfarin mocktail. Have another pointless day."   

Ham radio exams are (or at least used to be) about the physics, engineering and etiquette of radio communication. "Tech" allows you to insult anyone, anonymously, without knowing anything at all.

Not sure about the numbers, but ham radio certainly was never as popular as mobile phones anywhere. However the sense of achievement  at having built a rig from scratch and spoken (or even Morsed) with someone on the other side of the globe is quite different from dialling a number on a gadget you don't understand.

[Bored chemist]

A couple of years ago I was interrupted whilst lecturing, by a nurse suddenly standing up "because my watch told me to".

I'm pretty sure that the old idea of getting someone to page you, or setting the alarm on your watch to sound, in the middle of a dull meeting so that you could look at the gadget, feign shock, and rush out without anyone being suspicious is a well known trick.
(Yes, I said "pager"- I also said it's an old idea...)

[Bored chemist]

with a docusate and warfarin mocktail

Why warfarin?

[varsigma (OP)]

Another observation: I know only one or two people who I could classify as tech-savvy. They have old mobile phones and the odd laptop lying around.

I went through a stage like that, where old possibly still useful bits of kit, including old wires, old radios, old electronic or electric appliances were stashed away. The utility was of course, time dependent.
These days mobile phones can be repaired, but models older than a few years aren't popular. It used to be there were computer hobbyists, these days building your own computer from parts is probably a lot more effort than buying one off the shelf.

Increasingly it's harder to get experience fixing gadgets because they get redundant more quickly than they used to. What do you think humans will do about this tech becoming redundant problem? How does anyone keep up?

[alancalverd]

Why warfarin?

Computer says eggs→cholesterol→coronary artery disease. Can't undo the eggs you ate this morning so let's reduce blood viscosity and clotting just in case. Don't argue with AI - it's a capital offence in the Brave New World.

[alancalverd]

These days mobile phones can be repaired, but models older than a few years aren't popular.

I've just ditched my clumsy, timewasting and lifedamaging Device which was even bigger than my first analog mobile phone and filled the screen with photos of other people's cats, lunches, selfies and Wordle, in favor of the ancient Nokia dumbphone that actually fits in my shirt pocket, makes phone calls, and has a battery life of about a month on standby. Just the coolest guy on the block, me.

[paul cotter]

Warfarin is for treating AF, also killing rats. A statin is what you need after all that egg. Otherwise an excellent post there, Alan. Yours sincerely, the friendly pedantic luddite.

[paul cotter]

No Alan, i'm cooler than you, mine is a nokia 3510i

[alancalverd]

Statins rot your brain. Catch 22.

[alancalverd]

I'm pretty sure that the old idea of getting someone to page you

It's top of the list of Hollywood Cliches
1: I've got to take this call
2: He has a right to know
3: We don't want to involve the police
4: We must protect the president
5: There's a serial killer on the loose
6: Jennifer Aniston
and remember that every disaster movie begins with someone ignoring a scientist.

[paul cotter]

Not advocating the use of statins, just trying to improve the consistency of your AI scenario. Personally I would be extremely wary of them. My cholesterol levels have always been healthy so that situation has never arisen and I sincerely hope it stays that way. There are alternatives, ie fibrates, but I don't think they work as well.

[varsigma (OP)]

I'll toss this into th' salad:

An anthropologist whose stuff I've read says that all human development (i.e. adaptation) is driven by need. If we don't need it we forget about it.

This anthropological rule of thumb explains why we didn't change much for tens of thousands of years, why we didn't develop better weapons for hunting or construct more permanent homes--we didn't need to. There was plenty of big game around and once you've figured out how to hunt and kill a certain species, it becomes knowledge that can be passed down; there's no need to change anything.

So what explains the rapid pace of tech changing. Almost as soon as it hits the shelves, newer and better stuff is in the pipeline. There's a learning gap; spend three years getting a tech degree and at least some of what you learn won't be, ah, needed anymore.

[alancalverd]

Marketing is the business of creating need. Just look at the shelves of perfumes and cosmetics, or the adverts for phones that are so big and clumsy that they have to fold in half: the only reason you "need" it is because someone else has got it!

If you need to learn to use the new product, it's not as good as the old one. Boeing 737MAX.

[Bored chemist]

If you need to learn to use the new product, it's not as good as the old one.

So, walking is better than riding a bike (or a horse).
Interesting viewpoint.

[alancalverd]

Bikes and horses are different from human legs - and incidentally not as good at climbing ladders or shopping in Tesco - not new products to be compared with the old bike or horse. And like most people I don't have to lock my legs to a lamp post or put them in a field when I'm not using them.

Early pocket calculators used "reverse polish input" (A enter B +) because it was an efficient use of  hardware, but were beaten in the marketplace by "arithmetic input" (A + B) devices that followed the sequence you learned to write at school.

I haven't seen the updated training schedule for the 737MAX but learning how to switch off the safety system to prevent it killing you encapsulates an absurdity.

[varsigma (OP)]

As an electronics hobbyist, I followed the development of silicon chips. So I guess I know how sophisticated many of the devices available to the average joe are these days.

I keep an eye on the new development programs at places like Nvidia, Intel, AMD etc. When I was a uni student, the VAX-11/780 was brand new, with a tech innovation called virtual addressing; so I managed to get ahold of the tech manual for the VAX architecture and see if I could figure out how it worked.

Since those days many more innovations, particularly in the ways transistors can be packed onto a chip, have occurred. It would be a long and complicated exercise trying to understand a tech manual, even just to get a handle on addressing modes or the instruction set.

So I would say there's a big gap between what these modern devices do and what they're capable of. The rule of thumb applies; build something useful for the masses, and they will buy it. If only because they perceive a need and so, they believe having the latest gizmo will make them happier. What that means for the tech industry is having to dumb it down, make it "easy" to use. Uh huh.

[jasonlava]

Think about how kids today can already whip up websites or code basic apps ? that's gonna be the norm, but even more advanced. With AI tools becoming user-friendlier, crafting algorithms or tinkering with quantum computing could be as common as making a TikTok video now.