What Makes Tech Great?

There's always a low flying buzz about what's hot in tech today. Like the OQO model 2 with it's (OMG) OLED display. Or Microsoft's visions for the future but what is it that really makes tech noise, tech buzz?

This is a question that has me most befuddled.

Several years back I pestered the modern laptop manufacturers to build a real mobile laptop. Not a portable computer you could take with you and use when you arrived, but a laptop that could be used 'on the go'. It was so easy to criticize the tablet manufacturers of the time for the processing bricks that were on sale. And behold! Just as I'd hoped for 3 years ago, a whole slew of low priced, mobile, powerful interweb connected handheld devices.

After pestering all the makers and finally purchasing a miniature little laptop ... I just don't use it like I'd hoped. In the several years of ownership, there's only been one occasion when having a laptop in my pocket has actually been of some sort of use. It was very geeky to pull out your miniature laptop to dump your photos onto in the middle of a museum, but well ... it is practical right?

So the UMPC has style and price point. Similar to mobile phones. While Sony and Palm were creating the smarter, better more fully functional mobile phones, motorola cut their legs out from under them with sexy looking flip phones that had poor features and weren't durable. Microsoft continues to develop terrible operating systems with sexy menus. There's an awful lot of marketing that continues to screw up technology.

And this isn't only relegated to the commercial sector. Tons of open source developers get together.. so Linux (I'm sorry, GNU / Linux) must be good, right? Actually, the vast majority of Linux distributions are only fit for use in places where people don't see them. And yes, there's always things you need your ugly sister to do but just because she comes cheap, is that a reason to hire her? How can Apple create an entirely new OS (not new now, but you know what I mean) in a year but Linux still not have a GUI interface where text fits on the buttons?

Not to be ungrateful (heaven forfend) but shouldn't us tech geeks ask for more? What about some real inspiration, development in new areas. Give me an electric car, a home fusion generator, a hamster to power my refrigerator. Stop making 20 different styles of computer headphones and 60 different styles of computer mice. Start making computing helmets with screens and speakers and spatial mice.

There's a very low bar in technology today and people are eating the sand. This is probably sad only from the point of view of the avid technophile. It seems to me that we're renegging on our responsibilities to future generations for not demanding better tech.