For us over 50 - Favourite Technology

[vixen1700]

boyse7en said:

How do you know what you want to play? I can never remember the names of bands I like, so tend to end up streaming the same few artists on a regular basis.
I browsed my CDs the other day and was surprised by how many artists i hadn't played in years

Well there are thousands of tracks in my history, then I might put in a generic search like '60s Garage Punk and a load of tracks will come up.

Then there are odd little Youtube channels like Captain Bee Fart, which play excellent new obscure stuff.

[GroundEffect]

vixen1700 said:

j4ckos mate said:

I had a go of an occulus rift at weekend,

I wasnt expecting a lot from it, but the thing is really impressive,
I was in the Lancaster raid over Germany
fantastic bit of kit

Interesting.

What's the range of stuff that you can get for it like/and price?

Worth getting or technology too new?

Will it be outdated quickly?

So many questions!

I would wait for the Gen 2 products to come out - the limitation at the moment is the hardware required to run the games (if it's games you are wanting to play) since you needed the fastest of the fastest PC hardware right now for a good experience, and that's £1200+....excluding the £300-600 headset/gear. Also the headsets themselves have a limited field of view, which gives you a bit of a blinkered experience...I want 120 degree FoV then I'm jumping in.

[vixen1700]

GroundEffect said:

I would wait for the Gen 2 products to come out - the limitation at the moment is the hardware required to run the games (if it's games you are wanting to play) since you needed the fastest of the fastest PC hardware right now for a good experience, and that's £1200+....excluding the £300-600 headset/gear. Also the headsets themselves have a limited field of view, which gives you a bit of a blinkered experience...I want 120 degree FoV then I'm jumping in.

I'll give it a miss then.

[Swampy1982]

Cold said:

A quick thought about the exponential growth comments; I'm not seeing much in the way of new innovation, just a refinement of previous ideas or an amalgamation of existing technology.
"New" ideas seem to have stagnated somewhat.

#controversial.

I often thought this, much like many video games in the 90's where you could level up your character to become stronger (final fantasy etc) but then the enemies you are fighting get proportionately stronger, I feel the same about technology.

Now we have 75gb broadband, but we need it to stream 4k movies...

In the past we have floppy discs, but that was capable of handling the work docs and acorn games that we played at the time.

[C&C]

Cold said:

A quick thought about the exponential growth comments; I'm not seeing much in the way of new innovation, just a refinement of previous ideas or an amalgamation of existing technology.
"New" ideas seem to have stagnated somewhat.

#controversial.

Apologies for the long post...

I guess it depends on your view of what constitutes new innovation, and the timescales you are considering that nothing new has come along in "recently". There's also inevitably a lag between the invention/development of the first experimental example of a technology, and it becoming widely commercially available at a consumer friendly price.

If you take TV displays as an example:
The CRT tube was invented in 1922. The first widely available monochrome TVs were around 1934-36.
The colour CRT tube was invented 1954. Colour TVs didn't become widespread until the late 1960s.
LCD colour display first produced around 1986. It wasn't until around 2007 that LCD TVs out-sold CRT TVs.
OLED displays - early development 1990s. First OLED TV went on sale 2008. Only last few years have they been cheap enough for widespread use.

So you could say that (for example) OLED TVs are just a refinement of existing technology, because they were developed in the 1990s, and the principle prior to that, (or even that they are just a further development of older TV technology), yet I'd say this is an example of a new technology, as it's only recently been available to the general public.


I'd say 3D printing is pretty new to the public - first consumer model around 2013/2014. Only really widespread the last couple of years. Initial FDM process was initially developed in 1988, and first FDM machine in 1992. It's the refinement of the process, allied with improvements in computing power that have enabled many people to use 3D printers now. Next development being metal 3D printing...

Another one I've just remembered, which amazed me when I saw it on a TV program about investigating possible "new" bacteria in landfill sites, was when the scientist mentioned using a portable DNA sequencing machine. I expected something really specialist, very expensive and pretty big. Apparently it's capable of sequencing something the size of the human genome. What they pulled out was a box the size of a cigarette packet with a USB cable to plug it into a laptop. I didn't really believe it, but on googling it, it is real, and what's more, it's available for $1000.


I guess what I'm trying to say is that with this inevitable delay between early development of a technology and its widespread availability, it's likely that quite a few future developments are already being developed in laboratories, but we may not yet be aware of them.

For some ideas as to what may be coming along, Future tech reviews (this is just one example) may be of interest. Worth looking back at their previous few years of predictions too.

All the above obviously IMHO..

Edited by C&C on Monday 12th November 17:49

[Fort Jefferson]

Add blocker on Fire Fox.

[deckster]

Cold said:

A quick thought about the exponential growth comments; I'm not seeing much in the way of new innovation, just a refinement of previous ideas or an amalgamation of existing technology.
"New" ideas seem to have stagnated somewhat.

#controversial.

Can you define 'innovation'?

If you take the most basic view, then the P1 is just a refinement of that time that Zog the caveman put his foot on a log and rolled along the floor, the Kindle is nothing more than the latest version of runes scratched onto a rock, and the entire internet really just a glorified village noticeboard.

[motco]

Turn7 said:

Push button start in my Caterham.....

The total lack of electronics and computer wizardry in my Westfield! Carbs, contact breakers, non-servo brakes, no ABS or stability control, no power steering, a real throttle cable. It's great!

[Kermit power]

85Carrera said:

Turn7 said:

Push button start in my Caterham.....

The whole push button thing on modern cars is a a ridiculous affectation (and I “speak” as a Caterham owner with a redundant/ridiculous push button ...)

Why do you say that?

I love the fact that I can walk up to my locked car, open the door, get in, press the button and drive away, all without having to bother fishing the key out of my pocket.

[Kermit power]

Admittedly I'm only 48, but I was thinking about some of the differences between my life now and my life when I was 13, as my oldest son is now....

My son will never experience the joy of hunting for porn under country lane hedgerows unless he really can't figure out how to get round the parental controls...

He will never have to phone up a girlfriend's house on a landline and run the gauntlet of her father answering...

He will never have to choose between going out on an evening or staying in to watch the programme that absolutely everyone will be talking about in the morning. Equally, he will never really have that experience of absolutely everyone talking about the same programme in the morning, as there's just so much choice now...

I do think it's really sad that he can now find all the instruction you want on YouTube about how to build your own Go-Kart, but kids just don't seem to get together to do physical stuff like that any more.

[NDA]

SickAsAParrot said:

Softsynths. Was obsessed by analogue synthesisers when I was young, but they were expensive and I could only afford a couple of simple ones. A little laptop powerful enough to generate not only analogue sounds on-the-fly, but with ridiculous amounts of polyphony was something I never even conceived would be possible.

Yes definitely the music thing.... whilst I'm not in GetCarter's league, I've been through the recording revolution a little... starting with a rather lovely TASCAM reel-to-reel and mixing desk, into early MIDI and the Atari and finally to Cubase and beyond.

As others will no doubt testify, with the right skills 'home recording' is as good as studio used to be - and so much easier.

[ReaperCushions]

For me (Although 37, not 50+) it has been the shift from the computer to the smartphone.

I remember in my late teens / early 20s when the internet took off... the first hotel booking sites, the first search engines, the first online banking portals. All of this was revolutionary, even though I'd only experienced a few years of adulthood without them.

Now it all in my pocket. I would think I have moved from 90% of transactions on my laptop and 10% manual (Paying the odd cheque in for example) to 90% on my phone 9% on my laptop and 1% manual. I use my laptop for a few items that I feel need a bigger screen and it feels like such a bind to get it out of my bag, boot up, log in, google search, login to booking site etc...

A couple of other mentions:

- Price comparison / booking consolidation websites. No more having to apply 10 separate times for car insurance or search for every single hotel in a town / city and search for availability.

- Facetime. This has been transformative when living on the other side of the world to my family in the UK. When I first went traveling we would call home once a month and email once a week with a couple of pictures. That, however, at the time would have felt revolutionary compared to writing a letter and posting it like generations before me.

[GetCarter]

Kermit power said:

85Carrera said:

Turn7 said:

Push button start in my Caterham.....

The whole push button thing on modern cars is a a ridiculous affectation (and I “speak” as a Caterham owner with a redundant/ridiculous push button ...)

Why do you say that?

I love the fact that I can walk up to my locked car, open the door, get in, press the button and drive away, all without having to bother fishing the key out of my pocket.

Can't be doing with keys myself. Either in a Seven (flapping around on tracks - very annoying) or elsewhere on roads. And no, there are no relay cars thefts here, and never will be).

ETA If I lived in England, I'd def be buying a crook lock or a faraday pouch!

Edited by GetCarter on Monday 12th November 19:20

[renmure]

I’d never heard of Shazam till reading this thread and downloaded the app last night. Wow!!

[J4CKO]

TTmonkey said:

back in the day, loading a game on the ZX spectrum..... took ages and often failed. Me an the then girlfriend used to be able to have a shag whilst waiting! (I was pretty quick but she was always happy!!!!)

Jet Set Willy

[ReaperCushions]

Another one for me:

Micro targetting advertising.

I remember watching the minority report back in 2002 and they had a concept that physical advertising hoardings could read our faces and then call out to us 'Hey ReaperCushions you should buy X product'.

While the physical advertising hoardings haven't come to the mass market (I believe the technology is there). Our online advertising has become so micro-focused based on all of the data we leave behind everywhere we visit and online, I find it astonishing.

My facebook feed is surrounded by targetted ads for things I actually need, might want or even have considered buying based on my behaviors, social media posts, location tags, everything! My phone knows more about me that I do, and that is used to target specific items right at me... no one else... me.

While this can be a scary thing for some. I think its fantastic as adverts are inevitable and have been around for hundreds of years, but now they are exactly relevant to me and my current situation and thought process. Incredible.

[J4CKO]

vixen1700 said:

j4ckos mate said:

I had a go of an occulus rift at weekend,

I wasnt expecting a lot from it, but the thing is really impressive,
I was in the Lancaster raid over Germany
fantastic bit of kit

Interesting.

What's the range of stuff that you can get for it like/and price?

Worth getting or technology too new?

Will it be outdated quickly?

So many questions!

Here you go, have a read in here,

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Steam has a specific VR section and Oculus do, plenty of stuff out, its variable and new stuff is coming all the time.

I think Oculus will release a new model fairly soon, its been out a couple of years and things change fast, the images arent as pin sharp as a high res monitor but they are pretty good, the sense of immersion can vary from meh to startling depending on implementation.

I didnt want to wait and am not disappointed, new ones with higher resolutions may need a more powerful PC.

Some stuff is quite pricey but plenty of free stuff, Google Earth VR is epic and free.

[Swampy1982]

I was thinking about on the way home tonight was why don't we have the ability to record and rewind radio in the car...

I have digital radio, and I have a hard disk (Audi jukebox) in the car, I'd like to be able to "sky plus" the radio.

Does this exist? Other than podcasts?

[motco]

There used to be DAB portable radios with hard drives in the early days of DAB. Maybe they died out, I have no idea, but they could be extended to car use if the demand was there.

[TGTiff]

I hate computers with an absolute passion!
When I retire in a few years I will bin my laptop
If anyone wants to get in touch they can post me a letter.