100 years in the wrong direction

I can’t decide whether I was born 100 years too early, or too late. But I am certain that technology for the most part sucks right now. This is a very conflicted position for a technologist to be in.

On the one hand, technology is remarkable. We build so much incredible complexity into such small spaces. Take the iPod for instance: All my music in a palm-sized device that I can carry with me, anywhere I go. That’s truly remarkable. And yet at the same time we seem to be completely incapable of sustaining a reasonable degree of elegance in our innovations. The bleeding edge isn’t so much itself bleeding, as causing us a death of 1,000 cuts. Microsoft Windows has now invaded the cell phone and it’s not pretty. While the VCR may be going the way of the Dodo, DVD players are even harder to use on the whole.

Where’s the simplicity? (Fast Company recently had an excellent article on the elegance and simplicity of the Google home page — it’s very much worth a read):

Like desperate Gullivers, we’re pinned down by too much information and too much stuff. By one estimate, the world produced five exabytes (one quintillion bytes) of content in 2002 — the same amount churned out between 25,000 b.c. and a.d. 2000. Little wonder that Real Simple has been the most successful magazine launch in a decade, and the blogosphere is abuzz over the season’s hottest tech innovation — the Hipster PDA: 15 index cards held together by a binder clip.

Too much information is a bad thing. I don’t want the kitchen sink in my PDA, my car, or my email program.

There is hope, but why is simple elegance so rare? The fringe enjoy things like Apple’s OS/X or Intuit’s new super-easy to use Simple Start. I love the Simple Start’s tag line, “accounting software for people that don’t really want accounting software.”

I think I have a certain vestigial nostalgia for the age of dreams. When the world wasn’t quite fully explored, when technology was in its infancy and new discoveries seemed to be leading us toward elegant, charming innovation…