Friday, October 14, 2011

It's just...

One of my "man, if I had a nickel for every time" things is describing new tech as "just" *insert old tech + some new improvement here*.

The iPad is "just" a big iPod touch.  Yeah, 10 hours of battery life and a perfectly-sized screen for an airplane, a couch, a chair or the bathroom?  Maybe that's a good thing.

The Porsche Panamera is "just" a stretched out 911.  Yeah, 0-60 of a sports car and it fits the family plus luggage?  Well, that sucks.

Siri is "just" a voice recognition tool paired with a context-aware AI engine and embedded into an OS.  We've had voice recognition, AI and OSes before, so I guess that's not cool either.

Beer is "just" water, hops, malt and yeast.  Who would care about those?

Kids, everything is made of something else.  Wholes are greater than the sums of their parts.  Next time you find someone making a bajillion dollars selling something that's "just" a combination of other things that already existed... Be happy that they came up with an awesome new combination of things and unleashed it upon the world for your fucking enjoyment.

I feel like our entire globalized capitalistic system is working in overdrive trying to create awesome new things that would seem like magic beyond the wildest dreams of someone even a few decades removed from now, and all the tech community can muster in response is "meh, Simpson's did it."

Spoiled brats. =)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Agreed. In the short amount of time that I've spent messing around with Siri, I must say that it's nothing short of A-w-e-s-o-m-e. -the dude