I’ve always liked new technologies. I like to think about all the possibilities that they represent and how they can improve my life. Apart from making things easier for me they can create new opportunities that I hadn’t considered before. However new technologies have always come at a price.
A few weeks ago I gave my reasons for not trying the new Google glass technology. One of the main reasons for me is that it has not yet matured to a level that I feel it will benefit me significantly.
Not a unique problem in new technologies. If you grew up in the 80’s you probably saw this commercial on TV and are familiar with “car knocks”
“car knocks” was a problem associated with unburned fuel igniting in an engine while it was running or just after it had turned off. Apart from being noisy and embarrassing, it could damage engines. The problem lay with the fuel for the most part. Gasoline by itself is extremely volatile and can ignite at unexpected times. In order to stabilize it, chemists in the early part of the century added lead to the gasoline. This helped stabilize the fuel but it also released noxious clouds of smoke with lead in it. Not very healthy. In fact some studies claim a rise in crime rates may have been due to an increase in lead pollution in urban areas. Whether this is true or not, I don’t know.
In the 1970s new laws were passed to eliminate lead in gasoline and switch to ethanol. The problem with this was that car engine design and gasolines had to be re-developed to work. So while the chemists and engineers tinkered we had to endure about 10 years of knocking car engines. Eventually they refined the engines and redeveloped the gasoline recipes and car knocking is now a rare occurrence.
Eventually new technologies become refined enough so that their benefits can be enjoyed by the majority of the population but at the beginning, those that run to embrace those technologies must be prepared to deal with the shortcomings.
Recent Comments