"First impressions count when it comes to new technology—and even technology aficionados are often too quick to write off promising innovations. Recently I recognized this prejudice in myself, while altogether lost on a narrow cobblestone street in Florence, Italy....
I figured the rented Nissan’s satellite system couldn’t get me any more lost than I would myself. So I programmed it for English, entered the address of the little hotel, and let it calculate the route. A Japanese car navigation system giving directions in the middle of Italy, I thought: this is going to be rich.
In moments, a cool, calm woman’s voice with a British accent started to speak, as she would for the next three hours....
In the heart of Florence I gave up second-guessing Linda entirely: I was too busy dodging pedestrians, Fiats and Vespas....
Then she calmly uttered, 'Your destination is in one hundred fifty meters.' But there was no hotel in sight. Finally the street narrowed even further and I pulled to the curb. We were hosed: Hertz would have to bring in a chopper to airlift this car out. At that moment Linda spoke up: 'You have reached your destination.' Scanning the buildings, I suddenly realized that we were parked directly in front of our extremely discrete and understated hotel.
So Linda became our new best friend for the rest of the trip. But the lesson I learned was much broader. When we see the first iterations of technology, it’s easy to write them off as flaky and not for us. That’s because we underestimate the power of persistent engineering to whittle away the problems, gradually eroding difficulties. And then 'suddenly' we notice that what had been awkward, expensive and unworkable has become a part of everyday life.
Consider the Internet today. In the wake of the dotcom crash, there’s lots of second-guessing about just how important the Web really will be. Readers complain that sites are too slow and reading onscreen is uncomfortable; merchants and customers worry that security seems like an unsolvable problem; marketers don’t think that Internet advertising works. But then we’re only about eight years into the Internet’s commercial existence. And literally millions of minds worldwide are working on everything from high-speed access to better reading devices. In another few years, the Web will be an essential element of daily life, in ways we can’t even imagine today. Just as it did for me that morning in Tuscany, the future will sneak up on us, before we even notice." [MSNBC]
Not a particularly new observation, but one that bears repeating. I'm already at the point where I will never again own a car that doesn't have a GPS system in it. The technology has proven itself to me, and it works well for me. Far better than the heated seats in my current vehicle. Now we wish we'd put a DVD player in the minivan, rather than a video cassette player. Live and learn, I guess.
These days, I hear librarians who hated the thought of implementing and learning CD-ROM databases bemoaning the loss of them in the brave new world of online databases. The same has been true with MP3s and will be true with DVRS (digital video recorders). If you look carefully, over your shoulder, you can see them sneaking up on you now. They're easy enough to spot in the wild, but soon they'll be on display in the zoo, where everyone can see and appreciate them.
Tuesday, May 28, 2002
