Overwhelmed By Tech
Gadgets were supposed to make life simple. But some just make people crazy
He was America's master gadgeteer. Al Gross inspired Dick Tracy's famous two-way wrist radio, he invented the walkie-talkie (because he "wanted to walk around and talk to other hams"), and he held patents on plenty of other wireless wonders. To many, Gross was better known as Phineas Thaddeus Veeblefetzer, the preposterous handle he invented for himself. However he's remembered, by the time Gross passed away last month, the sense of simple fun he had infused in nearly all his gizmos was entirely lacking from the endless numbers of personal organizers, portable phones, and multiple-function whatsits no self-respecting millennialist can afford to be without.
But wait! Call it Veeblefetzer's revenge, but this year's bumper crop of just-in-time-for-Christmas gizmos is gathering dust on store shelves. Sure, people continue to plunk down money for the things, but not as eagerly as they were six months or a year ago. So with the technology industry enduring its first bear market since gadgets became the hot new thing, many companies are scrambling to find out why consumers aren't falling in love with the latest stuff. The answer? Most folks are still trying to figure out how to work the devices they already have. Americans have poured billions into electronic equipment. That orgy of spending has brought--along with the prospect of semi-godlike powers--paroxysms of befuddlement, self-doubt, and anger. The complexities of the personal computer are a well-documented topic of complaint. (Dissertations have been written.) But now a host of smaller devices--pagers, cellphones, digital cameras, and fancy remote controls--are coming into their own as fiendish new instruments of mental torture.
It wasn't supposed to be this way, but the evidence of consumer angst has been piling up. According to a recent study by the market-research firm Gartner Group, 43 percent of the time Americans spend with electronic appliances when they first get them is devoted to fiddling or figuring out how they work; even then, hardly anyone figures out all the functions. "Most people use about 35 percent of the capacity of any one technology they get their hands on," says Michelle Weil, a psychologist and product-design consultant, "and then they stop."
No wonder. Computers promised to save us time. But what technology giveth, it also taketh away. Lydia Ferrante-Roseberry's Sony laptop has been plagued with problems since she bought it a year ago. "Sometimes it won't shut down fully or start up fully, and sometimes it just freezes in between things," says the 35-year-old minister at the Eden United Church of Christ in Hayward, Calif. The laptop has even, God forbid, caused Ferrante-Roseberry to lose a few sermons. But she endures her machine's quirks, she says: better that than a two-hour call to tech support.
Why can't all those savvy Silicon Valley engineers design phones and computers that are easier to use? Actually, they can--witness the runaway success of the Palm personal planner, hailed for its straightforward and intuitive design. When Jeff Hawkins conceived the original, he carved the prototype out of a small hunk of wood. But even pros like Hawkins, who knows the difference between a USB and an RS-232C, can be tripped up. "I went out to buy a middle-of-the-line Sony TV. I figured I'd also get a Sony VCR and a Sony camcorder, and they would all talk to each other," he says. "What a disaster it's been. The control on this TV has 25 input modes, and I can't figure it out. Sometimes, I can't even get the stations. My wife yells at me. `Why don't you fix this?' Hey, I didn't design it."
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