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> Also, I wonder if we'll ever see a return of enthusiasm and investment in tech related to the hard sciences. That's what I originally went into, but caree

> Also, I wonder if we'll ever see a return of enthusiasm and investment in tech related to the hard sciences. That's what I originally went into, but career growth and earning potential couldn't match soft tech so I ended up pursuing that instead. I led the technical team of a London startup for a few years and it was super exciting from a physics and electronics stance. We did did R&D into acoustics, vibration, materials sciences, 3D printing and manufacturing. We basically invented new kinds of surface microphones. Slowly the smartphone and app ecosystem ate into our priorities. We shut down the lab, binned the prototypes, shelved the designs. Nothing got patented. I ended up saying in a meeting one day, "This isn't a startup any more. We're all just employees of Apple". Everyone nodded. Then carried on. I left when about 80 percent of the daily grind was jumping through legal and PR hoops to get things past the App Store gatekeepers, who I took to be hostile saboteurs. Although the company lives on (and is doing well). looking back now I'd say the pathological fixation on smartphones and apps circa 2015 killed a very promising transducer tech project.

Nextgrid 4y ago
I wouldn't say smartphones are bad - they are an amazing platform that can make people's life better and open a lot of possibilities that weren't there before. The problem is the "attention economy". It used to be that you made money mostly from selling something that people found valuable. In the past decade or so however, the market has been turned upside down and you can make more money just hoovering up user data and wasting their time with ads - a lot of consumer tech eventually became a glorified ad serving machine (right down to the world's most popular desktop operating system). However that is clearly unsustainable - advertising is ultimately there to drive demand for real, paid products, and its value is directly correlated to how effective they are at doing that. The market has been propped up by VCs (you could start a company that would never become profitable and still get tons of VC money to live off as long as you could show "growth & engagement") but that's now coming to an end and the market is readjusting.
usrn 4y ago
Smartphones are killing a lot of stuff. IMO they've been mostly regressive. EDIT: RE: Smartphones enable new things I don't think there's anything new that smartphones have made possible actually. They've only made what was already possible popular. I had a very portable laptop with Wireless PCMCIA cards in 2010 (it was a hand me down from my dad and was made around 1999 so it certainly was available in 2006.) In fact I ran self hosting dev environments (plural) on it along with both Linux and Windows. Both OSes had overlapping window management and real multi tasking. It also had IRDA built in so you could (in theroy) send apps between them (I always just used the internet but smartphones can't even do that without going through an intermediary.) Tons of stuff smartphones can't do at all. RE: Smartphones are a UI improvement Compared to what cameras had? Maybe (I'm not entirely convinced of that even. Touch UIs are awful even without notifications and other modal UI elements popping and sliding underneath eachother while you're trying to do something unrelated.) Smartphone UIs are a massive regression from what the PDAs and PCs had before them though. RE: Smartphones don't have to be distracting if you don't install distracting apps No. The whole UI is built around giving all your attention to a single thing and scrolling through it. The web browsers are even design to be anti-productivity.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Would you actually prefer to buy all the devices in this 1991 Radio Shack ad instead? https://consumerist.com/2014/01/17/the-smartphone-has-effectively-replaced-all-the-technology-offered-in-this-1991-radio-shack-ad/ https://consumerist.com/2014/01/17/the-smartphone-has-effect...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - usrn 4y ago
    Yes I've actually switched to carrying around a seperate camera, map, radio, notebook, and flip phone because I'm that frustrated with smartphone software. Interestingly enough I can look at the map and camera at the same time, something smartphone hardware is capable of but made impossible by the software.

Nextgrid 4y ago

I wouldn't say smartphones are bad - they are an amazing platform that can make people's life better and open a lot of possibilities that weren't there before. The problem is the "attention economy". It used to be that you made money mostly from selling something that people found valuable. In the past decade or so however, the market has been turned upside down and you can make more money just hoovering up user data and wasting their time with ads - a lot of consumer tech eventually became a glorified ad serving machine (right down to the world's most popular desktop operating system). However that is clearly unsustainable - advertising is ultimately there to drive demand for real, paid products, and its value is directly correlated to how effective they are at doing that. The market has been propped up by VCs (you could start a company that would never become profitable and still get tons of VC money to live off as long as you could show "growth & engagement") but that's now coming to an end and the market is readjusting.

usrn 4y ago

Smartphones are killing a lot of stuff. IMO they've been mostly regressive. EDIT: RE: Smartphones enable new things I don't think there's anything new that smartphones have made possible actually. They've only made what was already possible popular. I had a very portable laptop with Wireless PCMCIA cards in 2010 (it was a hand me down from my dad and was made around 1999 so it certainly was available in 2006.) In fact I ran self hosting dev environments (plural) on it along with both Linux and Windows. Both OSes had overlapping window management and real multi tasking. It also had IRDA built in so you could (in theroy) send apps between them (I always just used the internet but smartphones can't even do that without going through an intermediary.) Tons of stuff smartphones can't do at all. RE: Smartphones are a UI improvement Compared to what cameras had? Maybe (I'm not entirely convinced of that even. Touch UIs are awful even without notifications and other modal UI elements popping and sliding underneath eachother while you're trying to do something unrelated.) Smartphone UIs are a massive regression from what the PDAs and PCs had before them though. RE: Smartphones don't have to be distracting if you don't install distracting apps No. The whole UI is built around giving all your attention to a single thing and scrolling through it. The web browsers are even design to be anti-productivity.

ghaff 4y ago
Would you actually prefer to buy all the devices in this 1991 Radio Shack ad instead? https://consumerist.com/2014/01/17/the-smartphone-has-effectively-replaced-all-the-technology-offered-in-this-1991-radio-shack-ad/ https://consumerist.com/2014/01/17/the-smartphone-has-effect...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- usrn 4y ago
  Yes I've actually switched to carrying around a seperate camera, map, radio, notebook, and flip phone because I'm that frustrated with smartphone software. Interestingly enough I can look at the map and camera at the same time, something smartphone hardware is capable of but made impossible by the software.