Technology for the sake of technology

Don't get me wrong. This is not a rant about everything related to technology, nor am I a technophobic. Though it may seem to be so, it is not directed at anybody in particular ;-)

The promise of technology has always been to make our lives better. But what I really abhor is people getting so blinded by technology that they forget that that all this is supposed to make our life easy and better, and just believe that if anything is new and funky, they need it! You know the type - "Your camera has 10 megapixels? mine has 11!", "I can watch NDTV on the (crappy little) LCD screen of my mobile phone.", "I can sync all my e-mails to my PDA from my laptop and (with squinty eyes) see all mails on it." This is exactly what the companies selling all this stuff want. This is what the Governments say helps improve the economy, through 'solid retail activity' and 'consumer's confidence in economy' or something like that.

Again, don't get me wrong. There are millions of products of technology that have improved our lives, but almost all of them come with myriad features that are just of snob value. When I buy something I try not to be blinded by the feature list, instead ask myself how many of those features do I really need. I don't need to browse the web on the tiny screen of my mobile phone. I don't need to see my e-mail on a PDA - my life is much simpler so far. I don't need 300 channels on my TV. A car that can zoom from 0 to 60 in a couple of seconds doesn't have any advantage in Bangalore. I don't need a watch that can show time at 50 cities of the world. When I see a product whose instruction manual looks like 'War and Peace', I know to stay away from it.

I have seen a person who had a fundoo home network, it let him log into his home computer from office and then turn off/on lights at home. He couldn't answer my simple question - "Why?" I think these are the type of people that inspire thoughts of toasters that can get on the Internet. Meanwhile, the percentage of people who are unable to use all the rich features of their gadgets is increasing, approaching 100. But these are the same people who jump at the next version of the gadget which has EVEN more features!