What are some examples of extremely common technologies that are actually a bit shit when you think about it? #askmastodon
@thor Earth
@thor Computer Mice. Over the last few weeks when I've been using three monitors for my setup, I was controlling my machine with a mechanical keyboard and a mouse; Moving my hand from the mouse to the keyboard to type gets old *really* quickly. On the plus side of things, this forced me to use more obscure keyboard shortcuts than before.. nice, i guess?
@thor Wi-Fi networks. Switching between them. Logging in with different services through different interfaces. Moving between networks. Security. Privacy.
@sconlan WiFi is a really good one. It's shit more often than not and everybody just sort of accepts it...
@simba Hmm, the shittiness of many of these isn't obvious to me.
@thor I'll expand on a few. The mouse, which I bet most people think is amazing, is 2 dimensional. We don't think or see or live in 2 dimensions, our user interface should not be inferior to our capabilities. It is crippled, in other words.
Smart phones. Especially because they are called smart. They are possibly the most destructive thing that humans have invented since the atomic bomb. You are all hanging your heads in shame while ignoring your friends and family standing there in your face.
@thor 3D UI, this is sort of related to the mouse issue, but I think we should be striving to invent UIs that are _superior_ to our capabilities. Which is not to say challenging. They should be easy to use, for a higher intelligence being. This would drive evolution.
Wide screens are cool but they're based on movies which are the result of the limitations of ancient camera technology. People are romantic about stupid shit they don't understand. The ratio should be the ideal for our periphery.
For example, cellphone OSes and apps were a bit shit before smartphones disrupted them. What's a bit shit in 2018?