Musings on apps

Please read the foreword to this before continuing reading. Thank you for your patronage! *salutes*

We have too many apps. WAY TOO MANY. I’m sure for kids born into the smartphone age, they can never imagine living without apps. How am I going to keep my schedule without a timetable app!? Ok…so maybe I’m exaggerating…but we really do have too many apps.

I understand of course that the diverse offerings we have are a result of entrepreneurial spirit and hopes to make everyone’s lives easier. There is just one problem with this concept, how does making you live off your phone make life easier?

If your life is in your phone, then when your phone dies..well so does your life. Of course real smart phone junkies will now look at me with a vilified expression and tell me about all these wonderful portable batteries and charging accessories we can utilize and I’d pointedly ignore them. I agree apps make many things more convenient. A tipping app sure beats having to calculate your tips when drunk, productivity apps makes working on the go more efficient…but when you sit down and think about it, some apps really defeat their purpose.

Apps that fall into this category for me are lifestyle apps. If downloading apps are a way to a healthy lifestyle then why oh why are there still so many fat and obese people? I downloaded a sleeping app a while back, mainly to keep track of my sleeping habits and sleep debt. I deleted it after 2 weeks. The app is technically supposed to help you sleep better…or at least sleep enough. They just didn’t take into account that when you are dead tired and want to lie on your bed, you don’t exactly have the energy to ‘punch in’ and when you have the energy to punch in you probably don’t fall asleep right away. I ended up with screwy sleep debt. Ok so that may be the fault of my own laziness but people think about it. The whole point of this app is to make my life healthier and more convenient, instead I have to spend my time fretting over my sleep debt and remembering to punch in and out of my app. Sleeping became a stressful routine. I feel so much better napping and waking whenever I like, without having to make the extra step to grab my phone from wherever it lays to tap a stupid button.

So okay 1 failed app. What about others? The stupidest one I’ve seen thus far is one that talks about maintaining a good eyesight. You know, like watch these videos and look at these pictures to help retain your eyesight. I think you know what’s wrong with this right? The app is supposedly trying to help you prevent your eyesight from failing but it does so by increasing the amount of time you spend looking at a screen. No, I really don’t see the point of this. In fact even some productivity apps leave me bewildered about its supposed efficiency. You see the thing with productivity apps, liken note taking ones and to-do lists are that they are offering a whole new way of organizing your thoughts and life, that you have to follow in order to get the most out of your new app. You gotta type your notes a certain way, assign your tasks in a certain way, spend hours inserting your calendar into it…on a whole it takes so much damn effort to really get any productivity out of these apps that I’d rather just save my time and my life by scribbling in a note book where I can have my to-do list, random thoughts and timetable on the same page, in short hand that I can understand (because the app simply isn’t smart enough to understand where to file “mom money”).

I know that apps give the illusion of making life more streamlined and convenient by converging everything on your phone and to a certain extent, it does and if you master the use of one, it may actually radically change your life for the better. But truth of the matter is, so much of it requires a learning curve that isn’t justified that you can be equally efficient in life without it. If I had the time to plonk my life into my phone, I’d rather spend that time taking the lives on pigs on my phone if you get my drift.

Conclusion? ANGRY BRIDS RULE!

Musings on technology

Please read the foreword to this before continuing reading. Pretty please with Royce chocolates on top? 

MY WONDERFUL READERS IT’S THE 21ST CENTURY!

Right, I’m expecting raised eyebrows about at this statement, you’re probably going “no shit Sherlock.” But no really! There is a point to this statement! (as much point as there can be in a book of musings and rants, but you get my drift….) We’re in the 21st century and right now the most technologically advance thing I have in my possession are the metal wires in my braces. (To which my dentist might indignantly reply: THEY are THE SAME MEMORY-WIRES USED IN SPACE SHIPS AND RELATED TECHNOLOGIES.) But do you see where I’m getting at with this!?

IT’S THE FUCKING 21ST CENTURY AND WE STILL DON’T HAVE HOVER CARS, SONIC SHOWERS AND ALL THAT CRAZY SHIT SCI-FI NOVELS PREDICTED WE’D HAVE! Am I saying that sci-fi novels are prophecies that predict our future? No. But they are the basis of our technological advancement expectations! Our cars are STILL funning on 4 wheels! I mean really what’s UP with that!? Whilst many of you may give me the deadpanned look and tell me ‘why change what works’, let me ask you, did you think we NEEDED touch screens when we had cursors and mouse? Nope, but then ipad came along and suddenly everywhere everyone needs a fucking touch screen, ya see my damn point!? It’s not about what works it’s about ADVANCING. And no my wonderful readers, the different number of ways we can improve touch sensitivity on screens and clarity doesn’t qualify as a giant leap for mankind.

What happened to the space travelling? The terraforming? The replicators and alternate energy sources? I mean really everyone, think about it, the excuse of ‘our technology just isn’t this advance yet’ really isn’t very good. Why? Do you know how many different retarded research goes into stuff like machines that can pick up gel like liquids, robots that can let dentistry students do practical on and (because I’m really not a big fan of touch screen on every damn device) IMPROVING THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SLATE TABLETS WE HAVE. If researchers, scientists and inventors spent half the amount of time they do researching on these things on developing space travelling, we’d be in space in the next 20 years.

Honestly though, it’s not the time they spent on these research, I’m not saying these more….inconsequential researches are unimportant, some of these inventions do go towards making the society more efficient and convenient, and of course I can never say that medical science research is bad. What really is the big bad problem in the development of our endless gadgets are the NUMBER Of COMPETING AND REPEATED RESEARCH IN THE SAME DAMN AREA ABOUT THE SAME DAMN THING. Talk about inefficiency man! For pete’s sake (then if not for MY sake), do we really need SEVEN COMPANIES researching and developing better touch screens AGAINST each other? (There are probably wayyy more but that’s all the big players in the industry now so…) How about if these bloody developers and researchers WORKED TOGETHER and develop the awesome glass touch screen in all our daily appliances that we see in the amazing videos?

Actually, you know what; a LOT of our problems would be solved if the damn scientists, researchers and what have you not just WORKED TOGETHER. It’s no WONDER our society is becoming so bloody stagnant technologically! (And yes you may argue that we have new gadgets coming out every month, but ask yourself honestly, does a new improved model of the SAME gadget really considered a vast advancement? I don’t really care if the case of my phone can now be green instead of black because that contributes little to no technological advancement value.) I’m going to drag Bob’s sorry ass into this argument because I need an example now.

Bob has suddenly become a researcher for new fuel sources for company A. Bob’s friend, Tom is a researcher in company B. They’re researching the SAME thing, but because they’re rivals, they don’t share their research, the two of them start at the same point make the same mistakes take the same amount of time to reach the same conclusion and ends up spending 20 years to find some measly new fuel source.

Now imagine if they worked TOGETHER, they can NOT MAKE REPEATED research and effectively cut each other’s research time by half and find some new lead in 10 years!! Which means that in the SAME amount of time they work ALONE, by working together, in 20 years they would have actually gotten somewhere PRODUCTIVE. Look people, yes some friendly competition is good for motivation but flying solo can only get us so far. If all the world’s brilliant minds working on solving global warming would just work TOGETHER instead of individually (in their groups I know but still ‘individually’) for the sake of bragging rights, maybe we would have solved this damn problem YEARS ago. Look at transformers!!! That damn movie has got the military, creative directors and a ton of other people WORKING together and see what kick ass shit they make! SO DEAR SCIENCE PEOPLE, START FUCKING WORK TOGETHER!!!
Seriously my dear readers, do you think bragging rights and patents would mean much if the humanity ceased to exist and or was in a state of peril?
On a completely unrelated side note, did you know that there’s actually a feasible cure for cancer existing but no big medical companies or hospitals are working on it because they can’t get patent over it so no one knows about something that could SAVE LIVES because everyone else are just too concerned about making more dough. It’s true, and your skeptical self can go read the article here http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/18/big-pharma-ignoring-potential-cancer-cure/ Yes, to you innocent readers out there, all that ethics crap are exactly just that, CRAP; nice fronts people put up to cover up the fact that everyone runs on financial incentives. (And no I’m not saying money is bad, I’m saying that if you’re going to be money-minded then be honest about it instead of pretentiously trying to be all righteous and holy, no one gives a fuck.)

So whilst the rest of us hype about next season’s iphone and ipad, I shall sit in my room emoing over the fact that even with our ‘advance’ technologies, we still have to wait for 4-7 working days for whatever we ordered on ebay to arrive because superficial researchers, scientists and other people in the technological R&D industry won’t work together to get the god damn teleportation device to work.

I WANT TO ORDER TAKE OUT FROM JAPAN DAMMIT! *grumbles*