Thursday, January 13, 2011
On iPhones and Mentos
Today I mistook E4 for F4 and the Talmage vending machine cranked out fruity Mentos instead of powered donuts; as a vending machine usability tester, I suggest moving the letters E's and F's to distant rows. My Mentos mishap brings me to grips with the irreversible nature of vending machine transactions (and technology in general). Technology has irreversible consequences. Take Apple's App Store for example: developers can make bank if their apps go viral. Are there negative consequences? Obviously it threatens desktop apps, but think bigger. iPhone apps envelop society's trend toward an all-at-once lifestyle -- a life where more and more is immediately available at our fingertips. Society demands time saving devices for our fast-paced world. But the time-saving iPhone can easily devour our free time with recreational games. This Catch-22 makes the Neil Postman inside me shout out that new technology bring both positive and negative consequences.
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You are a natural blogger.
ReplyDeleteWith greater power comes greater responsibility. (I think that's a Batman quote or something). Anyways, I think the benefits of time saving devices are great as long as people are responsible with their time and choose not to waste it given the greater amount of free time they have. (Vending machines have always caused me grief too)
ReplyDelete@Austin I think it was Spider-Man
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I just wanted to share that I spent an entire week with my family at a beach house over the break. Four of my family members have iPads, the rest have iPod touches. Needless to say, I spent the whole week talking to the top of everyone's head while they played Angry Birds or other apps. It was not the fun social coming together that so many say these devices and apps promote. The funny thing is that my parents and siblings with iPads hardly touched a computer before this. If the world takes the same direction as my family, it won't be good.
Sorry for the long post, this probably should have been a separate blog post on my own blog.
Idle hands are the devil's workshop. It appears to be human nature to spend time unproductively.
ReplyDeleteI think we should focus on the real issue here—vending machines. What are we going to do to fight back?
ReplyDelete