Technology technology we take for granted?

[alasdairm]

everybody has a phone that's just stuffed full of amazing technology - mobile data, location services and wifi have revolutionized mobile devices.

what apps do you use that weren't around a few years ago and without which it's now hard to imagine life?

what are other products you use which, for you, demonstrate great technology solutions?

something that comes to mind for me immediately are glasses/contact lenses. they've been around forever. i have terrible eyesight and would be absolutely done without glasses/lenses. i got my first pair of (hard) contacts over 35 years ago and i remember how blown my mind was the first time i took a walk down the street. now i have disposables and the technology is great - they are so comfortable and i just wear them a while and throw them away.

i am constantly impressed by the simple effectiveness of the derailleur on my bike - it seems like it shouldn't work so well but it just does

alasdair

 

[Robi]

Bio authentication,phone emergency alerts,my popcorn maker, my decorative abacus and I'm still impressed with magnetic tape and my switch blade.

 

[Quasimoto]

Soap.

 

[foodcrisis]

i think stuff like how we get clothes and what not mass produced... like any time a person rips or spills something on a shirt or pants, they buy a new one... what if people were only able to get shirts like once every 5 years because their wasn't enough resources... like the above user posted soap, like toilet paper is pretty crazy with all the trees it must use... and all the meds people take. they have to get these chemicals from plants or whatever some where to make them.. all this stuff is land used... crazy to think about. i've posted about my curiousity about how much land we actually have to support all these people... like i only shower once a week and it's fine. i use pretty much the same amount of soap as when i'd shower daily for one hower, maybe a little more. right now there is no real problem with resources, so we can all just shower as much as we want... but in the future i think people might go on meds less because the land used to make that stuff could go to some one else. people will probably shower less cause there won't be enough bath products for everyone... maybe anyways.. maybe people will vote they just like to bath all the time and eat more than necessary and take a ton of meds and there will be some form of population control. some people definitely believe too many people and everyone eating beef would case some pollution issues. kind of weird how stuff works.

 

[Cheshire_Kat]

i think stuff like how we get clothes and what not mass produced... like any time a person rips or spills something on a shirt or pants, they buy a new one... what if people were only able to get shirts like once every 5 years because their wasn't enough resources... like the above user posted soap, like toilet paper is pretty crazy with all the trees it must use... and all the meds people take. they have to get these chemicals from plants or whatever some where to make them.. all this stuff is land used... crazy to think about. i've posted about my curiousity about how much land we actually have to support all these people... like i only shower once a week and it's fine. i use pretty much the same amount of soap as when i'd shower daily, maybe a little more. right now there is no real problem with resources, so we can all just shower as much as we want... but in the future i think people might go on meds less because the land used to make that stuff could go to some one else. people will probably shower less cause there won't be enough bath products for everyone... maybe anyways.. maybe people will vote they just like to bath all the time and eat more than necessary and take a ton of meds and there will be some form of population control. some people definitely believe too many people and everyone eating beef would case some pollution issues. kind of weird how stuff works.

When I grew up we never bought soap, my mother made it from wood ash and animal fat. It burned a bit and didn't lather very much but got you clean. When your shirt, pants or socks got torn or worn, she sewed them back together.

It was a different world growing up on a farm in the 1940's... I survived just fine

 

[Electrum1]

Nuclear power plants. We should've built like 1,000 of them in the 1970's when it was much cheaper, but greenpeace villainized nuclear power and it worked. We could have dirt cheap energy right now but we failed to build them for "cheap" when we could have

plants completed in the early 1970s typically cost $170 million, while plants of the same size completed in 1983 cost an average of $1.7 billion, a 10-fold increase. Some plants completed in the late 1980s have cost as much as $5 billion, 30 times what they cost 15 years earlier

 

[pixies+]

When I grew up we never bought soap, my mother made it from wood ash and animal fat. It burned a bit and didn't lather very much but got you clean. When your shirt, pants or socks got torn or worn, she sewed them back together.

It was a different world growing up on a farm in the 1940's... I survived just fine

My parents did the same.
Outport Newfoundland (and many other places, of course) seemed to be very peaceful. Though not without its challenges.

I always say I was born 40 years too late.

I want to go back to playing with sticks and a bicycle wheel and having fun running through the meadows (with a biscuit to keep the fairies away). Those were the days I’ve never experienced . Sigh.

 

[deficiT]

everybody has a phone that's just stuffed full of amazing technology - mobile data, location services and wifi have revolutionized mobile devices.

what apps do you use that weren't around a few years ago and without which it's now hard to imagine life?

what are other products you use which, for you, demonstrate great technology solutions?

something that comes to mind for me immediately are glasses/contact lenses. they've been around forever. i have terrible eyesight and would be absolutely done without glasses/lenses. i got my first pair of (hard) contacts over 35 years ago and i remember how blown my mind was the first time i took a walk down the street. now i have disposables and the technology is great - they are so comfortable and i just wear them a while and throw them away.

i am constantly impressed by the simple effectiveness of the derailleur on my bike - it seems like it shouldn't work so well but it just does

alasdair

I wish I could use contacts. I have really bad astigmatism in both eyes and they don't fit. Granted I haven't tried in a long while. Good to know they have disposables like that though.

For me the two major things that are completely different now than when I was growing up is texting and GPS. Both of these things changed how we operated and communicated with each other completely. We don't always think about it, but you kind of had to actually know where the fuck you were going, and you couldn't just reach someone anywhere at any time.

 

[alasdairm]

some great examples and perspectives here. thanks so much.

soap is a great one - so simple and so effective.

i work in technology and have for over 30 years. i'm one of the geekier guys in my friend group.

at work, my coworkers think it's odd that i often take handwritten meeting notes.

my favourite cheap pen is a technology wonder to me - the pilot g2 rolling ball 0.7.
love this pen!

alasdair

 

[someguyontheinternet]

That's a great pen tbh

 

[Cheshire_Kat]

some great examples and perspectives here. thanks so much.

soap is a great one - so simple and so effective.

i work in technology and have for over 30 years. i'm one of the geekier guys in my friend group.

at work, my coworkers think it's odd that i often take handwritten meeting notes.

my favourite cheap pen is a technology wonder to me - the pilot g2 rolling ball 0.7.
love this pen!

alasdair

I use the Medium Tip G2 exclusively