Lacter/edit/jan4/dt1st/LK2nd
Hd Tech
Friendly
A quick pass at the newspapers one day last week revealed stories about the following products:
? A computer system for cars that understands voice commands, such as when the driver wants to turn up the heat or turn down the volume. Next spring, Jaguar will introduce the feature on its new S-type sedan.
? Hand-held information devices that can send and receive information through larger computer networks allowing, say, someone on the road to instruct his or her VCR what programs to record that evening.
? The growing popularity of digital TV (not to be confused with High Definition TV), which is starting to provide dozens of new programming options.
Add to this the extraordinary volume of merchandise that was sold online during the holiday season, and it becomes clear that as we prepare for the 21st century, the high-tech revolution has become user-friendly. Finally.
And it’s not just that computers and related gadgetry have become more reliable and easier to operate. It’s that they have a real benefit to the workplace and the home so much so that many of us consider cell phones, laptop computers and the Internet indispensable in the workings of daily life. Just a decade ago, many Americans had barely heard of those tools.
This technology renaissance has been a long time coming. What we now call personal computers, after all, were first available in the ’70s often under the moniker “micro-computer” but they were expensive, difficult to operate and very limited in functionality.
Even when IBM came into the picture with its “PC” version, and later Microsoft installed its now-ubiquitous software, the learning curve was steep, especially among the non-techie crowd. The ’90s saw widespread availability of the Internet, but first-time users were often frustrated by the sluggish speeds and hit-and-miss nature of cyberspace.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the computer world did not evolve with the mass market in mind. (In fact, there has been an ongoing tug of war within the industry between those looking to put out the fastest, most technologically advanced widget regardless of how temperamental it might be to the average user and those aiming at the “plug-and-play” market.) Even today, longtime PC users are routinely frustrated by the many glitches in Microsoft Windows, which the software maker says are sometimes inevitable due to the program’s complexity.
Despite these annoyances, there have been two significant developments: High-tech companies are becoming more savvy about the consumer market, and consumers are becoming more savvy about high-tech gadgetry.
On the company side, much of this reflects simple survival. With a limited number of major manufacturers and distributors, there is little benefit in playing the hard-nosed techie. No matter how advanced the application, someone is always waiting to come up with an easier or cheaper way of doing the job. That, of course, is what almost killed Apple during the early ’90s.
On the consumer side, this has become an increasingly computer-literate society fueled largely by the fact that anyone under 30 has pretty much grown up using either a Mac or IBM clone. And besides knowing how to operate a computer more or less many of us have come to accept the technology as an integral part of our lives.
Judging from the applications soon to be available, not to mention the way Wall Street is treating anything with a “.com” next to it, the betting is that people will want even more. It’s an exciting, if somewhat uncertain, way to end the century.
