Right on the money - the number of examples of absurd accommodations we are forced to make to finicky and tricky technology could probably take up a book or two or three. For me, the worst is the automated phone tree and the hoops one has to jump through simply to be put on hold to hopefully speak to a human before sunset.
I have worked for a cable company (not Spectrum, and not the TV department) in the past, and one of my jobs was probing questions to diagnose internet and wifi issues. While I don't intend this comment to be all about figuring out your remote issue, it is possible you were using the TV remote, and not the cable remote. A Samsung remote, for example, will allow you to adjust the volume and power, but not the cable channels (Apps are different). Though I realize you may have been using the Spectrum remote because the TV remote would have changed to input or other antenna channels if you pressed the channel button. Since 2007, all TVs have had built in ATSC tuners, mandated by the U.S. government, to require the ability to receive over the air broadcasts. Thus in any major city, being able to watch local stations is still possible without a cable subscription (not so in most European countries). Anyways, ATSC 1 & 2.0 do not have upload capability. Newer TVs with 3.0 will use some sort of monitoring feature, but ATSC stations will still be able to broadcast under 3.0 for some time at least.
Regarding future tech, you may be interested in this website, which examines how high-tech is not always better: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ And a lot of "low-tech" today is actually very high tech compared to 50 years ago. But because technology moves so fast there are many more generations of technology in 20 years that wouldn't be seen in 1000 even 500 years ago.
Couldn't agree more, Ross, and you were kind in your assessment of the issues. How many times have I been caught in "security" loops just trying to get access to content or even my own stuff? Numerous. Almost every day. Convenience? Ha!
The corporations don't give a shit about the users. They have created software that is infuriatingly complex. There oughta be a law!
A good friend my age (78) who grew up in Cleveland and remains a fan of the Cleveland Baseball Team now known as the Guardians was gifted two tickets to a Yankees-Guardians game by his son who lives in Southern California. But my friend, at the time, did not own a smartphone and could not display the tickets. The son had to call the Yankees and arrange a special entrance for us with alerted security.
This really speaks to me. I moved in with my parents during COVID so I decided to buy them a giant fancy TV. I got a "smart TV" even though they already have a little box from Amazon that does the smart TV stuff. Friends and internet articles told me that I should pay about $150 extra to get a TV that wasn't smart, but that seemed silly to me: they could just ignore the TV's "smart" features and use the little Amazon box.
The result is a setup so confusing that as soon as I moved back out they started watching Turner Classic Movies together on my mother's laptop. (If we come up with vaccines for cancer OTOH that really will match penicillin and I will forgive our era for the smart TV.)
"At the concessions line, I could not pass up my soda and hot dog to an employee to be rung up. I had to place my items onto a metallic, square-shaped tray and wait for a computer to scan them. The items had to be aligned just so in order for each one to be properly registered."
Yes, this is very annoying. I've encountered it at Orioles games too. At least the season ticket package I bought gives me 25% off on concessions.....
...which I can only use by pulling out my phone and pulling up a bar code.
"Whatever AI does, however, will not match the impact that indoor plumbing, electricity, and penicillin had on modern society"
You're obviously familiar with Bob Gordon. :)
On the subject of your post, you might also be interested in Acemoglu & Johnson's "Power and Politics." Their thesis is that the direction of technology development and its specific applications are not inevitable, and that historically more often than not these developments have been applied toward enriching the few. I think your example of the concession setup at Barclays is a very good example thereof.
"The physical ticket wasn’t a technology that needed to be upended or optimized; it worked quite well."
Not so clear that it would have continued to work quite well though, as counterfeiting gets easier and easier to do. It is also a lot easier to resell tickets now than it was. You might not think it is worth it on the balance, but you can't pretend there are no advantages to the new arrangement.
And as far as AI goes, maybe it will have been overhyped initially. But the future lasts forever and it is just getting started.
A related phenomenon: the way QR codes have usurped URLs is really, really, *really* bizarre. I hate QR code menus on principle as a smartphone eschewer, but I admit QR code menus, playbills, etc make sense. There's a strong aesthetic case for them in print media as well if the alternative is having https://long-ass-website-name.com/article-name-694201337 splayed across five lines in a column of newsprint. But now you see QR codes... in fifteen-second TV spots?? Who is whipping out their smartphone's QR code scanner in ten seconds?? Just baffling all around.
I've seen some cute attempts to integrate the squares into imagery - I got a paper bag from a store recently where there was a whole black-and-white pixelated scene on there and a QR code alongside it. And hypothetically I think you could knit a QR code into a scarf or sweater which could be kind of funny. (Brings a new meaning to the phrase "ugly sweater" !!)
I have a lot of great memories attached to perhaps a hundred ticket stubs from bands I saw in my youth. A good friend still has the stub from the Denver Nuggets game he took his wife to on their first date. These and other precious mementos are being wiped out of existence.
ugh yeah the internet opened up the doors for the disruption of established pipelines of media and goods to such an extent that all of the American economy has seemed to pivot directly towards a philosophy of "disrupting and breaking things" in which every company is treated like a startup and the venture dollars flow like gd wine, so much so that now the MBA class who's been appointed to leadership positions in seemingly every company under the sun by their respective board of investors are not allowed to do anything but disrupting and break things down. Nothing works because our whole consumer economy for the last thirty years has become a big celebration of the "move fast and break things" mantra and it's been putting us in an incredibly perilous place, especially now that the national interest rates have been raised for the first time since 2008. What happens when the unstoppable force of the start-up web 2.0 freaks meets a lack of limitless federal loans? I guess we'll see. Probably nothing good.
I just watched this doc "Being in the World," which features Hubert Dreyfus (and others). This post instantly made me think of this clip on technology. (This is from 2010 - and you can tell) https://youtu.be/dyPSWZe_ItA
Right on the money - the number of examples of absurd accommodations we are forced to make to finicky and tricky technology could probably take up a book or two or three. For me, the worst is the automated phone tree and the hoops one has to jump through simply to be put on hold to hopefully speak to a human before sunset.
I have worked for a cable company (not Spectrum, and not the TV department) in the past, and one of my jobs was probing questions to diagnose internet and wifi issues. While I don't intend this comment to be all about figuring out your remote issue, it is possible you were using the TV remote, and not the cable remote. A Samsung remote, for example, will allow you to adjust the volume and power, but not the cable channels (Apps are different). Though I realize you may have been using the Spectrum remote because the TV remote would have changed to input or other antenna channels if you pressed the channel button. Since 2007, all TVs have had built in ATSC tuners, mandated by the U.S. government, to require the ability to receive over the air broadcasts. Thus in any major city, being able to watch local stations is still possible without a cable subscription (not so in most European countries). Anyways, ATSC 1 & 2.0 do not have upload capability. Newer TVs with 3.0 will use some sort of monitoring feature, but ATSC stations will still be able to broadcast under 3.0 for some time at least.
Regarding future tech, you may be interested in this website, which examines how high-tech is not always better: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ And a lot of "low-tech" today is actually very high tech compared to 50 years ago. But because technology moves so fast there are many more generations of technology in 20 years that wouldn't be seen in 1000 even 500 years ago.
Couldn't agree more, Ross, and you were kind in your assessment of the issues. How many times have I been caught in "security" loops just trying to get access to content or even my own stuff? Numerous. Almost every day. Convenience? Ha!
The corporations don't give a shit about the users. They have created software that is infuriatingly complex. There oughta be a law!
A good friend my age (78) who grew up in Cleveland and remains a fan of the Cleveland Baseball Team now known as the Guardians was gifted two tickets to a Yankees-Guardians game by his son who lives in Southern California. But my friend, at the time, did not own a smartphone and could not display the tickets. The son had to call the Yankees and arrange a special entrance for us with alerted security.
This really speaks to me. I moved in with my parents during COVID so I decided to buy them a giant fancy TV. I got a "smart TV" even though they already have a little box from Amazon that does the smart TV stuff. Friends and internet articles told me that I should pay about $150 extra to get a TV that wasn't smart, but that seemed silly to me: they could just ignore the TV's "smart" features and use the little Amazon box.
The result is a setup so confusing that as soon as I moved back out they started watching Turner Classic Movies together on my mother's laptop. (If we come up with vaccines for cancer OTOH that really will match penicillin and I will forgive our era for the smart TV.)
"At the concessions line, I could not pass up my soda and hot dog to an employee to be rung up. I had to place my items onto a metallic, square-shaped tray and wait for a computer to scan them. The items had to be aligned just so in order for each one to be properly registered."
Yes, this is very annoying. I've encountered it at Orioles games too. At least the season ticket package I bought gives me 25% off on concessions.....
...which I can only use by pulling out my phone and pulling up a bar code.
Brilliant and thought provoking commentary on things that produce the sense of malaise and unhappiness that Mary Trump has analyzed so brilliantly.
"Whatever AI does, however, will not match the impact that indoor plumbing, electricity, and penicillin had on modern society"
You're obviously familiar with Bob Gordon. :)
On the subject of your post, you might also be interested in Acemoglu & Johnson's "Power and Politics." Their thesis is that the direction of technology development and its specific applications are not inevitable, and that historically more often than not these developments have been applied toward enriching the few. I think your example of the concession setup at Barclays is a very good example thereof.
yes, Gordon came to my attention last year, and a lot of what he wrote made sense to me
"The physical ticket wasn’t a technology that needed to be upended or optimized; it worked quite well."
Not so clear that it would have continued to work quite well though, as counterfeiting gets easier and easier to do. It is also a lot easier to resell tickets now than it was. You might not think it is worth it on the balance, but you can't pretend there are no advantages to the new arrangement.
And as far as AI goes, maybe it will have been overhyped initially. But the future lasts forever and it is just getting started.
A related phenomenon: the way QR codes have usurped URLs is really, really, *really* bizarre. I hate QR code menus on principle as a smartphone eschewer, but I admit QR code menus, playbills, etc make sense. There's a strong aesthetic case for them in print media as well if the alternative is having https://long-ass-website-name.com/article-name-694201337 splayed across five lines in a column of newsprint. But now you see QR codes... in fifteen-second TV spots?? Who is whipping out their smartphone's QR code scanner in ten seconds?? Just baffling all around.
I despise QR codes. I forgot to write on them this time around.
Down with QR codes! My problem with them is that they are so ugly.
I've seen some cute attempts to integrate the squares into imagery - I got a paper bag from a store recently where there was a whole black-and-white pixelated scene on there and a QR code alongside it. And hypothetically I think you could knit a QR code into a scarf or sweater which could be kind of funny. (Brings a new meaning to the phrase "ugly sweater" !!)
LOL come to think of it, a QR code looks a lot like an ugly sweater!
So true, technological solutions in search of problems.
Old man yells at cloud.
I have a lot of great memories attached to perhaps a hundred ticket stubs from bands I saw in my youth. A good friend still has the stub from the Denver Nuggets game he took his wife to on their first date. These and other precious mementos are being wiped out of existence.
ugh yeah the internet opened up the doors for the disruption of established pipelines of media and goods to such an extent that all of the American economy has seemed to pivot directly towards a philosophy of "disrupting and breaking things" in which every company is treated like a startup and the venture dollars flow like gd wine, so much so that now the MBA class who's been appointed to leadership positions in seemingly every company under the sun by their respective board of investors are not allowed to do anything but disrupting and break things down. Nothing works because our whole consumer economy for the last thirty years has become a big celebration of the "move fast and break things" mantra and it's been putting us in an incredibly perilous place, especially now that the national interest rates have been raised for the first time since 2008. What happens when the unstoppable force of the start-up web 2.0 freaks meets a lack of limitless federal loans? I guess we'll see. Probably nothing good.
I just watched this doc "Being in the World," which features Hubert Dreyfus (and others). This post instantly made me think of this clip on technology. (This is from 2010 - and you can tell) https://youtu.be/dyPSWZe_ItA