(Categories: Wzzup)
During the christmas-holiday I was reading the book “Simplexity”, more on that later… but something struck me: “Humans are suckers for scale (think of the Power of 10 video).” Things that last for a long time impress us more than things that don’t. Things that scare us by the size strike us more than those that don’t. I remember the time we did an one-way mirror test with Hewlett-Packard. We tested the newly developed HP handheld with a group op Techno-Freaks and Techno-phobes. The latter instantly remarked that the HP handheld was the one with the most readable screen but it took them over 60 minutes to recognize it was the only handheld with a color-screen. For them it was a small difference and wasn’t associated with a big achievement. The freaks were totally amazed within 10 seconds because they understood the hurdles for this breakthrough.
I wonder whether we (society) will appreciate the small (nano) instead of the Giga we are used to in ICT?
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Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard H. Thaler
52 customers reviewed this article averaging 4.0
Isbn-13: 9780300122237
Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself. Thaler...
Sometimes all the small changes and breakthroughs add up to giga shift. And although it is hard to see those little steps along the way, the end result is very often felt quite hard. Even though the color display wasn’t recognized by the techno-fobes at first, today, even they will demand a color display.
So, today I doubt whether anybody will appreciate the small innovations, but in the end, they will change our daily lives. However, that might take a much longer time than we are used to from the ICT era, but it will disrupt our lives eventually…
That is exactly what I mean =) The fact that the new BlueRay disc fits 72 cd’s is the result of the miniturization of storage devices… the facts that it is smaller makes the functionallity bigger… we are often most enthousiastic about improvements in size, performance etc etc. and indeed many small changes can make one big change.
The reason I have doubts is that it is often said that the ICT-revolution will be followed by the nano-revolution, but will it? Is nano maybe just an extention of the ICT-revolution (like the Blue-ray example above).. or ???
this is a very interesting thought. i wonder about the ‘techno lust’ that is driving first wave of innovation. this wave is very feature oriented, in other words highly susceptible to (explicit) version numbers.
we will be going nano, as you say. i expect the nano to be part of something else, jacket?, shoe?, body? and, if they are part that ’something’, not easily upgraded. especially if that ’something’ is your body. and upgrade (newnewnew) is an essential part of fulfilling techno lust, i think.
so if the early adopters are not satisfied in this basic need of upgrading will they be the drivers in adopting (near) future innovations? or do we have to start looking for other people and/or groups? is the male25-35 not the determining target group anymore?
I start to realize that NANO is a means to an end… so we will not live through the nano-revolution… it will be defined by its means not the source… Plastic is a good comparison… plastic has changed our lives, it has had momentum.. put did we live through the age of plastic of e.g. more that automation of everyday life? if nano is ‘just’ the means… what is the ‘eng’-game?
i don’t know yet if i agree on your ‘means to an end’ assessment but the analogy with plastic is great. if plastic was the means what was the end? what is (or has been) plastic’s endgame?