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What’s the most innovative or surprising use of technology you’ve seen recently?
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Technology is evolving rapidly, and I’m always amazed by new and creative applications. What’s the most innovative or surprising use of technology you’ve come across recently? It could be a cool gadget, an app, or an emerging tech trend. Share what you’ve seen and what made it stand out!
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Is this how AI journalism gets article prompts?
Reddit, What is the most innovative thing you have ever done?
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Can also be stories of friends and family.
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Movie theater in my hometown have pre-prepared popcorn bags with with self serving butter machines, which sucks because you can't butter the middle of the bag. Unless you do what I do and stick straws in various depths of the bag and use them as butter funnels. Voila! Butter on every layer of your popcorn.
Are the FAANGs really that innovative?
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I consistently hear them regarded as the gold standard for innovative companies, but I don't know that I see that. Many of them seem to have been innovative in the very beginning when they released their basic platform or core product, but everything after that seems to be fairly incremental. I think we sorta buy into a myth that these companies are just the pinnacle of innovation without actually taking a step back.
Facebook/Meta - Facebook, the website, I will admit was somewhat innovative. But Facebook wasn't the first social media website. They just did it better. Since then they have mostly just acquired other social media companies and made them better, in part by integrating them into FB's product ecosystem. I mean the company made 98% of their revenues from advertising spend on their social media platforms.
Apple - While I love Apple as a company, they aren't really innovative at all. And I don't even think they try to be. They just take other people's ideas and execute on them better. smartphone, apple watch, apple tv/streaming sticks, VR/AR - apple was not the first to do any of these; they just made them better.
Amazon - Maybe Amazon is an outlier? their product mix has become so broad and encompasses so much that I'm not sure I can really judge them. I do think they deserve credit for expanding into so many areas given that they started as an online retailer; like what they have done for cloud computing is very impressive.
Netflix - What that is fundamentally new and unique have they really done since releasing their online streaming platform? And really in a sense they were the first to do it, but Hulu started their streamling platform the same year. Does the company even really focus on innovation? It seems they mostly focus on just expanding their selection of shows. And I get the importance of that but it's hard to say it's really innovative; meaning, it's hard to say they have been innovative since the basic innovation they went to market with (streaming platform).
Google - Honestly I have a pretty favorable opinion of google, but when I think about it the only exceptionally innovative thing I can think that they have gotten to market is the search engine. Gmail and google maps were important, but google wasn't really the first to do that. I know behind the scenes they have made some pretty significant discoveries and innovations, but unless you're a university or some other research institution I don't know that your innovation matters unless you can get it to market. They mostly get revenue from google search advertising. I'll give them credit on how they have improved Youtube, but it's hard to see how that's innovative. Truly, what are we pointing to in the past 10 years as evidence of how innovative google is? Google+? Google Glass? Pixel?
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The most innovative things that come out of those companies is infra and scale related - mostly out of pure necessity.
Apple also has a phenomenal brand. What they did with airpods is pretty innovative imo - turning a $5 accessory into a $100 luxury item that somehow still works better than any other bluetooth headphone.
What's a realistic invention you wish someone would bring to market?
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We're all engineers here, what is something that you've wondered why it hasn't been brought to market yet?
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A place where I could drop off my ideas and someone could make them and make money and give me money would be nice.
Reddit, what do you think will be the next technological innovation that changes the world and why?
Main Post: Reddit, what do you think will be the next technological innovation that changes the world and why?
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A big change people overlook is what can be described as the "interface bottleneck."
Basically, its how long it takes you to access information or perform a task using a computer or machine.
And its been steadily declining since computers were first created (or indeed, since the dawn of civilization)
Already a smartphone can tell us just about anything we want to know almost instantly. The biggest obstacle is actually typing your question in.
The question is what happens with technologies like voice commands, eye-motion controls, and even direct brain interfaces, shrink the bottleneck down to almost zero?
Essentially, what happens when we can access information nearly as fast as we can remember it?
Its not that far away, probably less than thirty years.
And it will bring change like nothing we have ever seen before.
Its going to make the impact smartphones and the internet have had so far pale in comparison.
And this isn't even getting into what effect this technology will have when combined with improved AIs tailored to our tastes and opinions.