Originally Posted by dave_j

I have amajor issue with today's 'smart' technology.

It's dumb to place so much reliance on gadgets that seek to eliminate the 'plan B' in our lives. Plan A, the smart phone or whatever, is wonderful when it works, and it does this most of the time.. but when it doesn't the absense of a plan B raises the blood pressure and leaves you sweating.

There is a general inability of most to understand the design fundamentals of the gadget.

How many have pushed the little button marked 'Return to factory settings' and stared wide eyed in the hope that it'll do just that? How many have breathed a big sigh of relief when it springs once again into life or sunk despairing in the nearest chair and reached for the wine when it hasn't?

Out there, there are engineers who design and build gadgets. These are the people in control of their lives, the rest of us simply hope that they have their brains in gear because we have come to rely on them so much.

Let's face it, we've become slaves to little plastic boxes and they run our lives for us. Forget the CIA or whatever the KGB calls itself today, it's technology that has us in it's grip today and we should use it with care.

Originally Posted by dave_j

I have amajor issue with today's 'smart' technology.
Let's face it, we've become slaves to little plastic boxes and they run our lives for us.

Originally Posted by Jingsamichty

Nowadays I am a reluctant but lazy convert to sat-nav. I will absolutely leave the house armed only with a postcode and I hate myself for it.

Originally Posted by Paul_Shepherd

I totally agree....and to be fair it is millenials that are the worst for this, but as the younger millenials have never known a life before technology can we really blame them not having a plan B? It just how life with technology is nowadays and increasingly progressing.

Originally Posted by Jingsamichty

Dinosaurs will die out.

Originally Posted by dave_j

How many have pushed the little button marked 'Return to factory settings'...

Originally Posted by Jingsamichty

Reminds me of my maths teacher handing out books of log tables, telling us that even though we had scientific calculators we 'still needed to know how to read a log book'. He did concede that we didn't need to read a slide rule.

Dinosaurs will die out.

Originally Posted by Paul_Shepherd

...Plan B has been eliminated.

Originally Posted by BristolUK

Isn't Plan B the back-up/recovery disc?

Originally Posted by Jingsamichty

Reminds me of my maths teacher handing out books of log tables, telling us that even though we had scientific calculators we 'still needed to know how to read a log book'. He did concede that we didn't need to read a slide rule.

Dinosaurs will die out.

Originally Posted by caretaker

A man got in his time machine, travelled back 100 years and explained to the people that he was from the future. They asked, "How is it different in your time, can you give us an example?" He replied "I have in my pocket a device that can access all the available information in the world, and I use it to look at pictures of cats and argue with strangers."

Originally Posted by Siouxie

No, at Pearson they won't allow you into the queue for dropping off bags (the old check-in) unless you have your boarding pass, as my sister found out.

Originally Posted by Shard

I wonder if the next generation of students will still learn languages, given the speed at which simultaneous machine translation is developing. Of course, there will always be people who learn languages as end in itself, but as 'practical tool' its value must be diminishing.

Originally Posted by bats

I doubt it. They can barely write so if that's an indication of deskilling then languages will go