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You might think that with all this technology around us, that not only makes our lives easier, but supposedly makes us more comfortable, human society (I won’t dare call it a civilisation, until it becomes one) at large has become more efficient in whatever goals it’s pursuing, but the truth is, that if we compare the simplicity and efficiency of some of the programs and ways of interacting with computers from just 10 years ago, with the programs and ways of interacting of today, the programs and workmodes of ten years ago, beat ALL of todays programs and workflows, methodologies, no exception !
The word efficiency has come to have a new meaning, and I’m very surprised to see that many words frequently used in hi-tech circles don’t even mean anymore what they’re supposed to mean (according to still standing dictionaries, and common sense, anyway), and even though supposedly the “big boys” and “big girls” (google, apple, yahoo, twitter, facebook, linkedin) all have supposedly spent enormous amounts of money and other resources during the past ten years to “make computing easier, faster, more reliable”, as many of these companies have put it, in my eyes (and many of my peer, older computer technician’s eyes) today’s programs, services offered by the big companies, devices built today, “official” operating systems (mainly windows, android, and iOs), simply don’t hold any water in face of the simplicity, and efficiency of same systems, same devices, or same services from just 10 years ago.
Having a thinner model of a smartphone DOES NOT make the device more efficient in any way. Having a smartphone have a quad-core or octacore (8 cores) GPU for playing videos DOES NOT MAKE IT A MORE EFFICIENT PHONE. It’s NOT SMARTER AS A PHONE. It’s excellent as a media player, I’m not debating that, but it’s not a smarter phone …
Having a laptop that can fold its LCD both ways, making it look like a book that can be closed both with the covers on out and the covers on the inside, DOES NOT MAKE A LAPTOP MORE EFFICIENT. It can still have crappy electronics, second-hand or worse engineering at its core, second-hand or worse base system software on the motherboard, a flawed design on all its other elements, and ultimately, a useless, user-spying Os over it such as Windows 10.
And having an operating system that *used to* beat almost all other OS-es, change ALL OF ITS CORE CHARACTERISTICS (ubuntu/gnome->crappy unity, anyone?) just to make some fresh graduates from highly appraised universities LOOK LIKE they’ve done a great job, IS NOT DEVELOPMENT AND IS NOT IMPROVEMENT. Sure, it all looks nice and shiny, but has anyone asked the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of users that have left ubuntu in favor of using other operating systems because of its stupid move to unity, how they feel about being robbed of their worktools ? Sure they haven’t ! Why ? Because regardless of the crappy, intelligence-insulting mantras like “we care for security and our users” (ubuntu, firefox, chromium/chrome), “we take the security of our users very seriously” and other kindergarten mantras like these, NOBODY in the technology world actually cares what the users want anymore. They all seem to know better what the users want, then the users themselves.
I often wonder why this forced degrading of user experience on all devices, all operating systems is underway, and who’s to gain from the simple fact that you or I as the final user have less and less say in how my operating system, programs, devices look, feel and operate, and why are the companies and “not-for-profits” (not for profit my foot, get real mozilla, at least stop lying about it) like Mozilla foundation and Canonical so afraid of listening to their userbase and letting them actually keep working efficiently.
The only plausible explanation that comes to mind, is that they don’t want their users to be CREATORS of anything, but instead, make them (the users) become just CONSUMERS of more and more useless hyped-up crap, especially non-educational, garbage-quality, mindless videos that are ever more frequent in total defavor of written text and creative works.
Ever wonder why TWITTER who supposedly was a way to COMMUNICATE VIA TEXT with each-other, has introduced VIDEO into its streams ? And why facebook and google plus both seem to report in different social media reports, that PICTURES AND VIDEOCLIPS are the most often used and most engaged media on them ? I do. I find it interesting that the more “fresh” content is posted on youtube, twitter, facebook, and google plus in form of videos (because due to access to “smart devices”, anyone can now become a “creator”, right ?), there is LESS AND LESS ACTUAL COMMUNICATION between people, between those who post those clips/videos and those who view them.
I find the great majority of clips shared online today outright insulting my intelligence, the amount of useless crap posted in the name of “growing your user base” (facebook), “gain more followers” (facebook, twitter, google plus), outright stupid. Does anyone still believe that any of the services that state these things actually deliver (like, 10.000 followers for 5 bucks and stuff like that). I doubt that any of them deliver.
So, NOTHING is at it was “supposed to be” anymore in the world of computing, computer technology, or just technology in general. Smarter and smarter devices gave birth to a dumber and dumber, less and less caring, less and less sharing world of people. So what was the use of it all ? Build everything up, and then tear it all down ? I honestly don’t know yet.
Welcome to the ANTI-EFFICIENCY PARADIGM.
