Technology, meh!

I have always liked my techy stuff. ‘Puters, digital mixing consoles, AD/DA converters for recording, GPS both console and handhelds,,,

My smartphone!

But as time has gone by over the last few years, I have found myself slowly weaning myself from the toys. Yeah, I still have my smartphone, thats how I keep up with things now, as well as communications. Probably not the smartest thing to do, but the daggum thing is more capable in more situations and a whole hell of a lot more portable, even vs a laptop!.

Well, said laptop took a turn for the worse and BSD’d on me. The dreaded Blue Screen of Death, so notorious in win’dohs based units. I considered booting a different OS into the carcass and see if it were able to pull a Lazarus, but finally said ” fuggit, its a paperweight”. I was able to use a notebook with a basic OS on it to retrieve my files and put them in a location accessible via my smart phone, thanks to a live USB port on my phone, but did not store them there. The notebook is as basic as you can get without resorting to DOS and will suffice for basic stuff where I find the phone just isn’t up to the task, OR I need something that can be a sneak and untraceable. Just don’t see much need for that anytime soon, but I do NOT throw away tools that still work, even if I haven’t a need for them.

The problem I find with the tech NOWDAYS, is lifespan. The game is in constant evolution and what works today is not cross compatible with what works tomorrow. RAM fits one breed of PC, and won’t fit the new unit you just got for Christmas. Last years Video card is two levels below what the next PC requires for hardware acceleration just to run the monitor.

And fragile? Oh yes; a halfway decent surge in the grid and something is gonna let out the magic smoke.

And product support tends to have a lifespan 15 minutes longer than the production run. Once its out and the next is up, tech’s are too busy to keep up to recall what once was. Or so it seems to me.

Heck, thats not just computers either. We have a welder at work that lost its mother board. All the analog stuff works just fine, I metered it all myself, but the controller is kaput, so no wire feed, no relay action to send juice down the line, nada. Product support? Replacement parts? Not on your damned life: “that unit ceased production November 2017. We no longer service them or carry parts for them.” No. Shit. Verbatim quote from the ‘support staff’. So much for that 3 year warranty, huh? Sadly, the unit isn’t worth raising a stink about, unless the stink is the fire to burn off all the insulation to salvage the copper.

Another side of it is in the cars now. Buddy wanted to put in an after market stereo system. Pulled the dash to pull the radio out and found a faceplate with what looked like a coax that went to the BCM. (Body control module.) The ‘stereo’ was a user interface only. I don’t remember how far he went (and he’ll likely remind me when he reads this 😉) but I do remember his outrage at the time.

I understand the evolution, but we are, IMO, far past the point where that evolution is sustainable. Computers design and build the next generation of microchip, not people. There is zero chance in hell of replicating the process without those computers/machines. No one could ‘build’ one from scratch.

And they aren’t exactly built for longevity. It seems to me they are built for a fairly specific lifespan, at which time they start to fail in dramatic ways. Most people just shrug, then trudge to wallyworldbestbuyoranyoftheotherbigboxstores and get the latest n greatest and HOPE they can recover lost info and remember all the passwords they let the computer save for them. (Or in the case of someone I know, forgot the programs even used passwords, backed up everything into the cloud, not a harddrive, and became upset that I was unable to recover ANY information for them. )

I’m not a Luddite, far from it, but I have more modern hardware, sitting defunct, that isn’t even 10 years old, yet have tools that are almost 100 years old that work like new, and likely will continue to do so long after I’m dust. We haven’t improved as much as we give ourselves credit for, but we have become a disposable society. Broke? Toss it n buy anudder.

Sad.

I’m not going to replace this laptop. All I used it for is acheived using other devices. The smartphone will be replaced as needed, or not, but honestly, I don’t care as much as I would have 10 years ago. Its nice to be able to rapidly access all your pics and vids etc, and they take up so much less room in digital, but when the tool breaks and can’t be repaired or replaced, it’ll be awfully damned hard to pull out that thumb drive to show and brag about the grandkids latest exploits.

Just sayin’.