Technology and Gadgets Got Obese, Just Like Their Users
Today we had a powwow about the F-35 and how unreliable, heavy, energy-wasting it is, not to mention highly expensive, overpriced by design and by intention. But there's a broader trend which relates to gadgets, not overcomplicated ensembles of computers such as "modern" cars, "modern" planes, and "modern" spacecrafts that cannot land on the Moon like crafts did back in the 1960s.
"Even the military radios were junk by the middle of the Reagan years," an associate recalls. "And the batteries intended to power them even worse."
I said that used to write about the military radios, taking note of them being full of holes, very expensive (massively OVERPRICED, Wikileaks had a lot of material about this in Yemen leaks; I wrote a lot about this at the time), and practically a monopoly, which meant the prices could not be brought down. Nor could weight; no competition means no incentive to improve. Somewhat hilariously, the thing that was supposed to enable secure, covert communication could not accomplish this very simple task.
"It's not funny when you have to depend on one and it does not work or when it weighs more than the old one or has a tragically short battery life or when you have to carry a second (old) radio to actually get radio capabilities," the above associate has recalled.
We spoke of how today's thumb generation (skinnerboxes) not only has obesity issues but probably cannot handle "complex" things like radios, which have more than a single button and are partly mechanical (so they can be fixed even under combat condition, just like rifles in need of repair/spare). "Every kilo adds up and one radio should have sufficed," we're told. "The new ones were not quite dead weight but better left at home."
"People were not obese back then," we're told regarding the times predating the bloatware. "One battery pack was supposed to last 8 or 10 hours but generally you got only about 45 to 60 minutes out of one that meant carrying way too much. Weight == slowness and lack of maneuverability."
This issue is not limited to appliances, as there's also the weight of software, wherein "more code == more liability etc" (slowness, requiring more hardware components, more things that can fall apart).
Looking at the modern fighter jets (F-35), they're akin to Hummers. "At least the Hummers tipped over less easily than the old jeeps," we're told. "They burn fuel at an insane rate however, both of them." (F-35s and Hummers).
Outside the battlefield it seem as though we have adopted many of the same practices and conventions. Remember clamshell phones? We now have "modern" phones that people cannot even fit into their pockets (even just to make calls) and battery life is so poor that they need to be charged daily, not once in a few weeks. Some of them need a battery replacement after several years (and it's hard when the batteries are not standard and soldered in) due to a capacity/wear problem; some of them take several hours to charge (a chore) "or charged multiple times per day even," I'm told. To be clear, we don't use skinnerboxes here.
If the objective is to communicate and do so reliably, aren't clamshell phones somewhat superior? They're also quite robust to falls, more so the 1990s Nokia phones. Imagine iPhones in a combat zone. Price points aside, what reliability level can be assured? How long before they beg for a "power bank" (more weight to carry around)?
"Some of the radios had power cables and data cables with *the exact same* connector," we are told. This helps with repairs. Good planning/design.
In the past decade or so almost no progress was made towards making things smaller or more efficient. They now sell us so-called 'phones' for slop, saying we need multiple cores and even (sometimes) multiple batteries for some mostly redundant chatbots. █