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I don't think there's anything misleading here, but there's still something irritating about it. These people spend loads of time and money designing futuristic

I don't think there's anything misleading here, but there's still something irritating about it. These people spend loads of time and money designing futuristic stuff and giving each other awards for it. In the meantime, we mere mortal engineers are wallowing in the pits of reality, solving actual problems like the plebs we were born to be. I know it sounds horribly bitter, but I really do sympathise with the negative responses to things like this.

noblethrasher 13y ago
"I don't think there's anything misleading here, but there's still something irritating about it. These authors spend loads of time and money writing stories about the future, and giving each other awards for it. In the meantime, we mere mortal engineers are wallowing in the pits of reality, solving actual problems like the plebs we were born to be. I know it sounds horribly bitter, but I really do sympathise with the negative responses to things like this."
- bjackman 13y ago
  But when I read Sci-Fi, I'm consuming: - The author's creativity and intelligence in extrapolating the technology's wider implications - A good story, including character development - Often some incredibly clever prose - Possibly, as a very secondary thing, elements of "Hey, imagine if AI was complex enough to form human relationships!" (for example) Here, I'm being offered the content of "Hey imagine if USB sticks were really cheap and you could just stick them on your computer like a post it!", but with the tone of "I created this thing: look how clever it is, here I am receiving an award for my ingenuity.
  - noblethrasher 13y ago
    I understand where you're coming from; I get similarly annoyed when people that are not UX experts design UI mockups that look cool but have no consideration of usability, feasibility, maintainability, etc. On the other hand, I love concept videos.
polshaw 13y ago
Allow me to articulate my issue with it. It pushes the impression that these are the creative geniuses that are pushing things forward. Someone else just has to do the 'little detail' of making it work. The engineers that spend their careers making this kind of stuff have usually thought of these ideas before, but they did not put up a flashy web page for people to fawn over-- because they actually realised the issues and inviabilities involved. This idea is by no means the worst- that award goes to the 'modular' mobile phone designed to reduce waste, that anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge of mass production or high-speed circuitry would instantly write off as laughable. With flexible circuitry, this is actually not that far from being possible. The main issue is the data transfer.. you could spend a lot of time and money getting something to work poorly, or you could just obtain the same practical functionality infinitely better and easier by making them act as physical shortcuts to cloud (or local) storage-- why would you want your data strewn across many slow, small stickies that you could easily lose instead!? And this links back to my original point that the engineers have already thought of it-- because you have just reinvented NFC.

noblethrasher 13y ago

"I don't think there's anything misleading here, but there's still something irritating about it. These authors spend loads of time and money writing stories about the future, and giving each other awards for it. In the meantime, we mere mortal engineers are wallowing in the pits of reality, solving actual problems like the plebs we were born to be. I know it sounds horribly bitter, but I really do sympathise with the negative responses to things like this."

bjackman 13y ago
But when I read Sci-Fi, I'm consuming: - The author's creativity and intelligence in extrapolating the technology's wider implications - A good story, including character development - Often some incredibly clever prose - Possibly, as a very secondary thing, elements of "Hey, imagine if AI was complex enough to form human relationships!" (for example) Here, I'm being offered the content of "Hey imagine if USB sticks were really cheap and you could just stick them on your computer like a post it!", but with the tone of "I created this thing: look how clever it is, here I am receiving an award for my ingenuity.
- noblethrasher 13y ago
  I understand where you're coming from; I get similarly annoyed when people that are not UX experts design UI mockups that look cool but have no consideration of usability, feasibility, maintainability, etc. On the other hand, I love concept videos.

polshaw 13y ago

Allow me to articulate my issue with it. It pushes the impression that these are the creative geniuses that are pushing things forward. Someone else just has to do the 'little detail' of making it work. The engineers that spend their careers making this kind of stuff have usually thought of these ideas before, but they did not put up a flashy web page for people to fawn over-- because they actually realised the issues and inviabilities involved. This idea is by no means the worst- that award goes to the 'modular' mobile phone designed to reduce waste, that anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge of mass production or high-speed circuitry would instantly write off as laughable. With flexible circuitry, this is actually not that far from being possible. The main issue is the data transfer.. you could spend a lot of time and money getting something to work poorly, or you could just obtain the same practical functionality infinitely better and easier by making them act as physical shortcuts to cloud (or local) storage-- why would you want your data strewn across many slow, small stickies that you could easily lose instead!? And this links back to my original point that the engineers have already thought of it-- because you have just reinvented NFC.