Are mose people now just 'Technology Consumers'?

Indeed.

druidh –

it’s called marketing. If you didn’t just accept that, learnt a bit about it and how to use it, would it make a difference to your life? Or do you just accept that it exists and is there to be used as necessary?

Cheers for that I’m reasonably aware of marketing and it’s functions thanks, I also don’t believe it’s a proffesion beyond reproach or question, in fact marketing is all about constantly re-assessing the market and looking forwards to gauge consumers needs/wants/desires and realigning, develop to meet these, and then promote the output of that process.

Marketing is an important business and organisational tool (a Bit like a PC) But it has played it’s part in the general dumbing down of our society too… To blindly follow where marketing leads suggests stunning a lack of intelligence.

Cougar

I’m often surprised at how many people are completely powerless with technology.

What surprises me more is how many of those people seem proud of the fact, too…..

I worry sometimes that advancing technology is making people stupid.

I think those points sort of summarise what I was thinking about yesterday (but failing to phrase very well for myself)…

I was listening to the radio this morning, and of course they were discussing our return to recession. The point was made that the promises of the UK becoming this great R+D nation that left the manufacture of our wonderful cutting edge ideas to those sluming it in the far east, hasn’t really transpired, and that (Shock Horror) companies in the far east are leading in the development of various new technologies.
I can’t help thinking that this lack of curiosity about the workings of our various technological purchases has gifted our far eastern competitors a bit of a head start in certain fields perhaps…

I do think the world needs aspirational goods to a certain extent, pretty Apple products, Aston Martins and the like are good demonstrations of what technology and investment in creative people can achieve, but I think these things should also drive understanding and peoples desire to try and make things even better…

Interesting that we seem to have zeroed in on Apple fans as the pinnacle of the “clueless technology consumer” that is a little unfair really, there are plenty of witless humans who are not part of the apple consumer dream…

Coming back to my original post the RasPi is very much a tool for learning and development, and that philosophy is something I personally really like (and it proves that technological curiosity is not dead yet I suoppose) it’s not a finished computing device or a product with a set defined use, as such its the modern electronic equivalent of mechano in a way.
What it’s users produce is only really limited by their imagination and curiosity, conversely the majority of Mac/Premium PC owners only seem to produce retouched photos, Vapid blog entries and justifications for their various indulgent purchases these days, despite owning the most powerful consumer computing tools ever… Perhaps the future is a bit brighter than the present after all…

cookeaa, have you read this? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zen-And-The-Motorcycle-Maintenance/dp/0099322617

Think you’d like it. It’s essentially about exactly this topic. 40 years old but very relevant today. Just replaces “Raspberry Pi” with “Motorcycle”

Interesting that we seem to have zeroed in on Apple fans as the pinnacle of the “clueless technology consumer” that is a little unfair really, there are plenty of witless humans who are not part of the apple consumer dream…

The point I was making though is that I do like (some) Apple stuff, but despite the drooling stereotypes I am neither clueless nor witless about that kind of technology. I do understand what’s going “under the hood” there, to fairly deep levels.

But… I don’t need to and I’m happy not to worry about it. In fact I’m really quite glad that I don’t have to faff about with it.

So I guess that is only really one step away from just not knowing at all.

(and the same principle can be applied to pretty much any tech)

Doesn’t explain why people are so seemingly proud of their ignorance though.

” Are mose people now just ‘Technology Consumers’? “

Well …

I don’t know anyone who has built their own laptop, washing machine, HD TV, mobile phone, games console, mp3 player, digital radio, tablet, e-reader, car, dvd player, coffee machine, gps receiver, chainsaw, or any of the other things what are technology.

I don’t know anyone who properly understands how most of these things actually work, or how to fix them.

So the answer is probably “Yes”

Personally, I’m not interested in ‘technology’ beyond certain things begin useful tools or a necessary part of life.

I don’t know anyone who properly understands how most of these things actually work

*puts hand up* Oooh oooh.. Me sir. Me!

or how to fix them.

*puts hand down again and stares sullenly at the floor*

Trouble is half these things can’t be fixed without specialist equipment and spares anyway.

Trouble is half these things can’t be fixed without specialist equipment and spares anyway.

you reckon?

I only say that as I’m sat here typing this on what is by now a bit of a “trigger broom” laptop since I bought it 6 years ago I’ve replaced a broken screen, various bits of plastic housing, increased the Memory, and swapped the HDD twice. My only real ‘specialist tools’ being a couple of screwdrivers and some opposable thumbs…

thats only cost a bit of my spare time and some cheap spare parts off fleabay Vs pissing away ~£300+ to replace a laptop every time it takes a knock or starts to look a bit tired…

In terms of the ‘looking under the bonnet’ analogy what I’ve just described is more like just changing a flat or topping up your brake fluid, but then again binning a perfectly servicable computer cos’ its older and a bit scruffy is like throwing away your car because its got a flat and you are too lazy or thick to look in the boot for the spare…

“Specialist tools” My arse! you’re just a shiney objects whore, the sooner you admit it the sooner I’ll admit I’m just a Beardy shed dwelling oddball randomly disassembling my family’s possessions for fun*…

(*Tacit admission)

bought it 6 years ago I’ve replaced a broken screen, various bits of plastic housing, increased the Memory, and swapped the HDD twice

Yeah, but you haven’t repaired any of that have you? You’ve just swapped in some new components and thrown away the old ones.

If you’d identified the blown capacitor on the hard disk controller and soldered on a new one THEN you would’ve “repaired” it!

you’re just a shiney objects whore

My main desktop PC is 8 years old and also a trigger’s broom: new HDD, CPU, motherboard, memory, heat sinks, fans, and three operating systems.

My old monitor is still sitting next to it waiting for the day I can take it into work and get one of the electronics guys to fix it.

My other half just asked me if I was going to get one – we’ve got an attic full of old computers so she thought it would be right up my street.

But I’m not tempted. I loved tinkering about with Commodore 64s and BBC micros – you turned them on, and could start programming the things in BASIC, even controlling output ports and the like. They were fantastic for tinkering with. The Pi? Well you can get it to boot Linux, then you’re in the same Linux environment you can have (and I’ve got) on any PC, just with less power.

So I don’t get the point really. A modern equivalent to learning BASIC would be to tinker about with web applications in PHP or something like that.

If you’d identified the blown capacitor on the hard disk controller and soldered on a new one THEN you would’ve “repaired” it!

But he did repair the laptop – in the same way one of the electronics guys at work will repair your old monitor by replacing one part for another part, or the person previous repairs a kettle by swapping the element. The fact it’s modular doesn’t detract from this. It’s just semantics.

I think it’s been the same for centuries – some people are interested in how things work, some people aren’t.
This won’t go away.

The fact it’s modular doesn’t detract from this. It’s just semantics.

Maybe, but to me throwing away an old bit of (expensive) kit and just plugging a new one in isn’t really repairing something.

Maybe, but to me throwing away an old bit of (expensive) kit and just plugging a new one in isn’t really repairing something.

you suggested doing exactly the same with the capacitor. just on a smaller scale. Why not identify the element of the capacitor that’s blown and repair that?

If you answer “because it’s not worth it” you’re just talking the same equation of cost, time, difficulty, skill and enthusiasm. The values are different, but the principle’s the same.

Why not identify the element of the capacitor that’s blown and repair that?

Because a little aluminium 10uF capacitor like this:

doesn’t have have any “elements” to repair and typically costs around £1 for five.

People take deep interests (and have really in-depth skills) in different things. I’m a technology nerd and I love taking cars and bikes to bits, but I have no idea how to fix my boiler, or grow decent veg, or draft a watertight contract, fly a plane, or build a wall that won’t fall down. Those people that do probably wonder why everyone doesn’t take the time to learn for themselves too, but I’m quite happy to let them do a much better job than I could. You can’t know everything about everything – what’s obvious to you is a mystery to someone else and vice versa.

This. You could just keep going downwards, but at some point what you’ve got is a tool or part that people just want to get on and use doing whatever it is they do- it makes no sense for them to roll their own, any more than it makes sense for a painter and decorator to make his own paintbrushes, or a mechanic to make his own tools. Of the people on here who build their own PCs, how many of them make their own capacitors or motherboards or whatever?

I work with technology but I don’t really know much about computer hardware- it’s just not the level I’m working at.

cookeaa – Member

Does anyone else see the world like this fella?
I mean growing up (and still to a fair extent) I constantly took things apart to understand, repair or ‘improve’ them, do people just buy black boxes of ‘technology’ with zero desire to understand it?

Has ‘looking under the hood’ to borrow an american term become a bit of a luddite thing?

eerrmm … what are you talking about? The whole place is infested by these people who consume computing technology and being controlled by it.

What? Asking them to understand? Are you out of your mind or do you want to get fired from your job? That is not a question for you to ask. The trick is to repackage things in a way that attracts zombies to the products … increase sales …

Who cares if they understand that they are carry simple miniaturised computer such as mobile … they do not have time for that as they need latest celebrities shite feed to them.

🙄

p/s: oh ya … the term ‘Black Box’ should be banned …

Personally, if any device of mine (household, vehicle, comms, IT, entertainment, etc.) breaks I’ll have a good look at it and have a good go at repairing it if it seems worthwhile, even if it might take time and money.

If I can’t work out what is up with it I’ll consult the www or ask one of my like-minded mates(-which one depending upon what the device is) about it.

For me, there is a lot of satisfaction in understanding things and resurrecting something that many people would discard. A lot of my things are previously-owned and repaired.

I like to set things up to work properly and even if something isn’t broken I might enjoy trying to improve it.

There have been times when I’ve spent time and cash on something that has not been successful, but I’ve almost always learned something in the process.

“Pride in ignorance” I have never understood.

ps. Those that say,
“modern cars/bikes can’t be repaired at home” are mostly wrong. Take off the plastic covers and underneath you’ll find an engine that isn’t vastly different to the one in a Mk1 Escort or Morris Oxford, albeit with fuel injection, a few plug-in sensors ….and on-board diagnostics.

My lad’s toy electric car – a couple of quid’s worth at most – stopped working. My first thought was how great it would be to get rid of a useless piece of plastic, but my mate asked where my tool box was so he could try and fix it. Conversely I have an old set of road wheels in the shed waiting for the day I learn to true wheels effectively. One thing I’m not remotely interested in learning about, the other i am. Looking around the lounge I can see stuff that, even with all the time in the world, I’m never going to learn about it all.

How many “under the hood” peeps get under the hood of biology or geology or chemistry etc? Someone who may not care how an iPad works might be fascinated with the anatomy of a squirrel. I’m don’t think it’s sad or worrying that they’re a technology consumer any more than it’s sad or worrying that Steve Jobs never bothered to understand why Tufty had such a fluffy tail.

Difference is, I’m unlikely to find myself in a situation where at 3pm on a Friday afternoon suddenly my squirrel is broken.

If you drive, you don’t necessarily need to be able to replace a worn piston ring, but you should at least know how to put petrol in it and ideally top up the oil and change a wheel.

Some people use this stuff day to day and at the first sniff of something they don’t immediately understand, don’t even try.

This discussion is really about the level of abstraction at which you wish to work, operate and understand.

Every time time you move up a level of abstraction you loose flexibility in your use but gain a more “instant fix”.

Personally I believe that you should always have a basic knowledge but firm understanding of the level of abstraction one below the the level at which you operate. This allows you to have an idea of the limits of your tools and assumptions that have been made allowing you to make most efficient use of your tools.

But I’m not tempted. I loved tinkering about with Commodore 64s and BBC micros – you turned them on, and could start programming the things in BASIC, even controlling output ports and the like. They were fantastic for tinkering with. The Pi? Well you can get it to boot Linux, then you’re in the same Linux environment you can have (and I’ve got) on any PC, just with less power.

Personally the interest is is using / programming the pi as being part of a low power distributed system. I’m currently sat here learning about programming (AVR) micro controllers for a project I have. Perfect for many small simple applications but it need a central brain. With a Ethernet or xbee connection to a central brain will allow me to have a low power system. Using the raspberry pi as a central unit rather than a normal linux box will be,

1. cheap
2. lower power usage

but still have load of power and possibilities with all the tools available to linux.

If you drive, you don’t necessarily need to be able to replace a worn piston ring, but you should at least know how to put petrol in it and ideally top up the oil and change a wheel.

Why? Because in this day and age you’re unlikely to need to replace a worn piston ring (or fix a squirrel). Those who aren’t naturally inquisitive will generally only learn how to fix things that are likely to need fixing or rely on someone else. Take Apple stuff again. I’m no engineer but I could go a reasonable way with a “broken” PC before having to ask an expert to help. As a very happy consumer of an iPhone I moved away from PCs because the idea of not needing to know how to fix something that doesn’t break was very appealing. (After several months of Mac use I’m disappointed that I have had to fix stuff several times and call their support desk; they don’t “just work” as well as iOS stuff, but that’s another story).

Would I rather learn how to replace a worn piston ring or give my car to a garage and ride my bike instead? The latter without a doubt.

It’s a cop-out summation, but people are different. As long as someone cares enough about the “how” we will still see innovation and advancement; not everyone has to care…

….someone has to fix the squirrels

I posted this pretty homage to 80 computers, adurino and radiohead on my facebook last night and got chatting to a buddy who can’t wait to get raspberry Pi’s to show his two young daughters what it’s all about.

I’m in process automation. I run a hackintosh. The thing is I just wouldn’t have the same mix of skills if I’d been born ten years later. I learnt more about coding on BBC’s and Amstrads, and more about automation from technic lego than I did from my entire Mechatronics HNC. (Okay maybe that’s hyperbole but the grounding certainly came from an ’80s childhood)

Teachers at school seemed to have a fear of breaking out the hardware – I remember “the” 386 and the educational lego automations kit living in locked cupboards and being talked about in hushed tones. Hopefully the PI might democratise this a bit.

So I’ve spent my entire career “under the hood” I’ve got a broad range of skills (I probably wouldn’t change my own piston rings, but I bet I could). It’s rewarding, and you come to realise that modern life would grind to a halt without us doozers.

I love a glossy bit of tech as much as the next man, but to be honest I only enjoy using software that I can see has been lovingly crafted. To keep going down this path the kids need to learn the BASICs

most people have always consumed, very few people ever care about why. When the first cotton mills were opened, did anyone actually care no, just meant better cheaper cloth. when the first computers were created did many really care? of course not, a few did but they were vastly outnumbered by those that didn’t.

We live in a world where tools are developed to make things easier, most people don’t care how a tool works, i buy a drill i don’t care about how it works, just that it makes holes in things.

i just hope theres going to be a load of ‘new’ programming companies and jobs out there for all these developers…

Oliver > well said. (-:

@roady_tony

There are two part to that stament.

1. Will we see any growth in the european economy? As a mature economy this depends on our interaction with depeloping nations and merging markets. This is the only part of the world econmy that ca serisouly grow. How grown consumerisum and property bubbles are only a ponzi scheme. Money has to come into an economay from outside. You can’t have infinite grownth from within. Ofcourse utmalty the world is a closed economy but there is still some room left for growth to prop up our bullshit econmoic model for a while.

2. Is technology, programming, hardwear a worth while sector?
I’d definatly say so. It’s an area more likly to grow globally than many other tradisional sectors. It is after all a sector of production not just a service industry. Hardwear and softwear people in the mordern technology industry analogouse to bricklayer, charpenters e.t.c. in the contruction industry. They actually do something, and create. Its not just people with mangment trainng manging other “managers”.

I learnt more about coding on BBC’s and Amstrads, and more about automation from technic lego than I did from my entire Mechatronics HNC. (Okay maybe that’s hyperbole but the grounding certainly came from an ’80s childhood)

True.
It’s worrying the amount of engineering students I meet now who haven’t really gone through the taking things to bits to see how they work process, or built stuff and are lacking a lot of basic understanding that would have been taken for granted in the past.
Whilst it’s true at a consumer level that the knowledge isn’t required because things just work, I think you do need that knowledge (or more importantly the intellectual curiosity to gain that knowledge) if you want a producer culture rather than a consumer culture, as the consumer model in my naive understanding of economics doesn’t seem very sustainable.

Some expanding “softwear” yesterday:

It’s worrying…

True. 😐

Some expanding “softwear” yesterday:

I know my spelling it terrible but I was on text based browser so tougher to check.

\end_poor_excuse

Personally the interest is is using / programming the pi as being part of a low power distributed system.

Yup, there are some interesting applications for it – I’m thinking of it as a brain for a Mikrokopter, for instance – but I don’t see those applications as teaching new people about computers.

What we need is a new BBC Micro 🙂

My monitor probably has some melting capacitors in it, but i really can’t be bothered to get a multimeter, decent soldering iron, various tools and then source new capacitors. It’s a 19″ and they cost £60 new.

But I did spend £7.50 on a new CCFL bulb for my laptop screen when that died. It was a nightmare job getting it fitted mind. I actually managed to source one with the connectors already soldered on which was a relief.

Back when I used to be a techie, I remember “upgrading” meant desoldering the 512kb chip on a motherboard and soldering a 640kb one on! When fitting a 100mb HDD meant you needed 3 partitions on it as the OS of the time couldn’t cope. Nowadays you can upgrade someones laptop fairly easily and cheaply with replacement CPU/RAM/HDD to boost its real world capability and they look at you like you’ve just done something skilled.

I know my spelling it terrible but I was on text based browser so tougher to check.

+100 geek points for using a text based browser! 😯

Lynx?

No links[/url], (not compiled with the `-g’ option enabled, which is impressive if you do), I prefer it to lynx. It’s my quick internet work around when at work and I can’t be bothered to set up my proxy.

text based browsers are possibly the most useful piece of software I have used when dealing with Linux/Unix servers…. and no other PC to hand.

Think I’d rather just use my phone!

The only time I’ve used a text-browser for any length of time was when checking that a website that I wrote worked okay on it.

Only used for downloading software – many ‘important’ linux software sites can be viewed very well just via text. Was very handy in the earlier days of Gentoo too…