Who doesn’t remember the Blackberry (BBM)? You would’ve thought that keyboard was a miracle from the almighty with how it was praised up and down, from your friendly neighbourhood stock investor to the lovers of all things tactile. We all have a story of typing by feel on BBM or taking your parents’ Blackberries to play that one brick-breaker game they all had pre-installed.
Though the iPhone was around, it was only with Blackberry’s decline —who knew there would be a ‘this keyboard is too big’ bubble —that Apple took centre stage. Nowadays, the average Android user may pooh-pooh Apple products, and an iPhone owner may cringe in disgust at a green text bubble, but for the most part the Venn diagram of what technology is capable of and what I want from a single gadget seems to be nearing a plateau.
All this to premise that we can stop with all the hyper advanced tech if the existing tech isn’t being used properly. Climate change, famine, disease, drought, the list goes on of problems technology can solve, yet the giants in Silicon Valley are focused more on how to backwards walk their way into trains, because all self-driving cars are going to need some kind of ‘track’ for it to follow on the road.
My point is, who’s asking for this stuff? Weren’t ride-share apps supposed to solve the problem of not having someone to drive you around? Taxi? Rickshaw? Horse and buggy? Or, I don’t know, maybe just building high speed rail in all these massive countries that politicians are suddenly so surprised their populations are divided as much on geographical lines as-
I’m getting emotional. I’m Canadian, and I don’t know anyone on this continent that doesn’t wish we had high speed rail to connect the coasts with the Great Plains. That’s a problem technology should be able to solve, not teaching artificial intelligence (AI) how to feel love and then only feeding it toxic memes off the open tailpipe of the Internet that is social media.
The fervour surrounding this sort of technocratic idealism is particularly impactful for Gen-Z, as we have grown up in an era of massive technological advancement, from AI to sustainable energy production, to being able to carry as powerful a device as a modern cell phone in our pockets. Technology seems now to be running away from us, whether it’s robots threatening to take our jobs or streaming services looking into how to track eye movements so that ads won’t run if you aren’t looking at them.
A great take that sums up the issue was an X, formerly Twitter, post from Onion staff writer Alex Blechman.
– Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
– Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus
It might be fun to attribute it to mad scientists unable to control themselves, but in actuality it’s greed, plain and simple, brought about by the idea that there must always be something ‘better’ to consume. It’s not enough that my phone loads at this speed and with an image so crisp you can smell it, it needs to load faster and be crisper for no other reason than to satisfy… what? The ghost of Steve Jobs?
As Gen-Z, we’re already breaking the cycle, whether its reclaiming physical media or not engaging with new technology just because it is newer and better. The plateau’s flattened off, so let’s focus on playing with the toys we already have.