Not all technology is good technology

Summary

I’m under my Blazer, fixing a fuel line and ranting about how not all technology is good technology. Button operated features and software bloat just make cars more expensive, more fragile, and impossible to fix yourself.

I just swapped a check valve in about 20 minutes with basic tools, and my message to developers is simple: ask whether people actually need a feature before adding it just because you can.

Raw

This is an amazing view. I’ve been here a couple of days. And a couple of days ago, I actually posted something on LinkedIn that for me has gone viral. It’s got 20,000 views, impressions, or whatever it is. Anyway, I’ve had loads of comments on it.

And it was a video that some guy made that I effectively stole. Yes, people share things on the internet. And this guy made a video about a trunk or a boot of a car closing with a, a with a button press and my take was was basically not all good technology is good technology in the sense that do we really need it now.

I have an old truck that I can fix literally with duct tape and a hammer effectively in fact I’m going to go and put on some togs and actually fix something on this which you can’t do on modern cards i’ll be back in a minute so i’ve got the tools out i’ve got the parts out in fact out in fact i’ve got to add a check valve to the petrol tank because it’s having issues.

Now the beauty of this car, of old cars, of things that don’t have technology, because not all technology is good technology. Yes, it’s nice to have the button to open and close the door, but then you have to have a computer. Computers go wrong. I’ve been in tech for 35 years. Computers always go wrong. It just happens, whether it’s the technology itself, like the components are failing, or whether it’s the software that’s created and there’s a bug in it.

Basically, software I understand, has bloats because people want specific features. I get that. And I had that comment yesterday, well, it’s different with software rather than hardware. Well, no, hardware still needs software. The technology is there because it needs the software to run. With old cars, with things that are manual, analog, and I’m not here to say, did analogs better than digital. The point is not all technology is good technology. You don’t need it. There’s a difference between needing and wanting. You may want it. I would love to have a button to be able to do this thing, but do you need it? Is it a necessity? Now, there is another thing to that as well, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

Hold on one sec. Let me get this ready, get under the car. This is so simple to fix. Check valve basically means it blows one way, but not the other way, so I don’t have petrol coming back. Sorry, the return valve, so the petrol doesn’t go into the return valve, so it doesn’t cause a problem with the end, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I’ll be back in a sec. Hold on.

Oh man, this is… Beauty of having a four by four is that it’s high up, so I can go underneath it. But there are rocks everywhere, so that’s a problem. So, got my parts, got my trusty tool, and I’m going to put the check valve in.

So again, the issue isn’t… the fact of having the feature is whether we need the feature. And I can understand there are some people that need the feature, you know, for accessibility and so on. Again, I had another comment about that. I understand accessibility. I get it. There are some people that need it. But the people that want it are the people with, you know, shopping bags. Okay. It will be handy to have it, it but the fact that you want it means that I have to pay more for that technology hold on a minute okay before I put this in and lose my thought so why would it cost more well you’re putting technology somewhere where somebody else doesn’t want it maybe the majority of people don’t actually need that want it need it or want it or need it or just want it they don’t want it, they don’t need it.

And why is it going to cost the car costs more? Because you’re putting more technology, you’re putting more resources, the car is going to cost more. Not only that, the more technology you have in something, it’s more likely to go wrong. So you don’t actually, I wouldn’t want it, I wouldn’t need it, I can put my things on a wet floor, it’s just the way it is. Yes, it would make things easier, yes it would make things nicer, and if it’s an option at the when you’re purchasing fine but even that the fact that the R&D and marketing and the workforce the factories everything has to create that technology so there is still a cost just because it’s an option and then you say opt out I don’t want this feature the cost has already been created the cost has already been factored into the price of the overall vehicle or thing or technology or whatever.

Here I am underneath my car fixing a freaking fuel line because it’s easy to do. There’s absolutely no fudge packet way that you could do this on any other kind and I know this from first experience my old car being a Mercedes A class you could it had a problem with the starter motor And I was told that I know now that you have to drop the engine and these engineers the way they’ve created this thing. You have to drop the motor to change the the starter motor. It was insane.

Anyway, I’m going to finish this and then I’ll finish off the video. Hold it one second.

Okay. Okay, let’s see if this thing works now and there we have it, it works, beautiful. I’m just going to check the actual engine compartment, there you have it, works. So again, the point isn’t… Wait, let me turn this engine off. Hold on.

So again, the point isn’t whether we want something. The point of technologies to help us, yes, I understand. I’m in technology. But the point isn’t to overcomplicate technology with features that only a handful of people or I’m not saying, you know, that we shouldn’t have these things because, again, some people need them. But we have to think about whether it’s needed everywhere, whether it should be an option or whether it’s needed at all.

I’ve just fixed this car in about 20 minutes. Obviously, it’s YouTube or it’s a video, so I have to cut it. But I’ve been able to fix this throughout my road trip while I’m here. Well, I’m here in Spain. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just I love tinkering.

You can’t do this with new cars. It’s just impossible. It is impossible. You need computer diagnosis tools, you need schematics, you need everything. And there’s some, I mean, what I’ve heard is that the new, I think the BMWs, you can’t even do an oil change in your car because they wanted to make the technology so good that you have to go to a main dealer to do it. It’s insanity.

If I buy a car, I want to be able to do anything and everything with it. It’s my car. And with this new technology that can be, that your car can be turned off or certain feature turned on, turned on or off, because you haven’t paid the subscription or you’re, it’s just insanity.

So again, I will die on this hill. Not all technology is good technology. And we’ve got to, you guys who are developers who are watching this, whatever, developers, programmers, you’ve got to, think, do we need it? Not let’s just put it in because it’s possible or let’s put it in because we can squeeze money out of these, uh, of our customers.

Not all technologies, good technology. And again, I will die on this hill, not literally this hill. It’s beautiful, that. Very cool. Anyway, do that, do what you will with that. And, uh, I’ll see you in the next video at some point. Bye.