follicle

It’s 2008 and here are ten things I’m still using:

1. Paper and pencil
2. Email
3. SMS
4. Mouse
5. Palm PDA
6. Power cords
7. Plain text files
8. Username/password authentication
9. ADSL
10. Hard disks

All these technologies are old. I’m bored with them. Where’s the revolutionary innovation? Are they really that good that we can’t improve at acceptable cost?

Let’s take a quick look at some of the alternatives put forward…

1. Tablet PCs?  Not yet. Wireless keyboards on PDAs or smart phones?  Nope.  Taking notes on a laptop?  Sometimes, but how do you quickly capture a diagram?  Surely there has to be a better multimedia capture solution than Word or some of the journalling software.  And maybe we need electronic ink so we can get good lightweight, high-contrast screens.
2. Ok, it kinda works, assuming you’re not overrun with spam.  But if it truly were a successful technology, it would be less intrusive and less visible.  I keep emails in a mail client and documents in folders — why?  They’re not fundamentally different.
3. Is this really the be-all and end-all of inter-personal communication?  Apparently.
4. Or trackpad, or stylus.  Fingers on an iPhone — now we’re getting somewhere.  More intuitive interfaces — not just point-and-click, point-and-poke.
5. I love my Palms (all five of them along the years).  But disconnected applications with separate data stores and rudimentary integration.  We can do better.
6. Two words… Wireless. Power.  Bring it on.  I don’t care if it nukes my brain, just free me from frigging power cords.
7. There’s something nice and simple and safe about text files.  But I still wonder why I’m settling for less than I really want.
8. I am sick of all those passwords.  You know it’s me, dammit.
9. Click.  Wait.  Yawn.
10. Magnetic oxides on spinning metal disks?  You what?

Come on innovators, and none of this patent protection rubbish.  If you’re invention is that damn clever, people will be laughing at it, not copying it.