written by owen on 2015-Jun-23.

The signs are everywhere. Desktop computers getting harder to find. People ask me if the desktop computer will become non-existent in the future. Then I started looking at the people that keep asking me the question. Its the consumer nerd.

All the technology news is being regulated to smart phone updates. Smart watches that come out that streams music from your phone which intern streams music from the internet. Companies that only exist because of social media. People micro-blogging on twitter. Netflix streaming. Video games that are essentially movies with quick time mini-games. Movies which are full length advertisements masquerading as reboots of tired franchises. I remember when certain things like comic books were the play ground of the nerdiest few. The rise of the "consumer nerd". This is not a new phenomenon. A large portion of the population could care less about new processors and replaceable hard drives. We are a new age of feel good technology.

The population of people who write computer programs and draw in Autocad has not disappear or gotten smaller. What has happened in that the population of people "computing" has increased 10 fold. This increase has come to the point where these "consumer nerds" actually start driving the computer technology industry. Most of this new market of techno-nerds have no idea how anything works or understand the intricate nature of the technology they use. They are basically terminal users, a product that google and facebook sells on to its advertisers. A herd of cattle on an open field.

Are desktops computers going the way of the dodo birds?

Look at it this way, hammers have been around for centuries in one form or the other. You cannot use you smartphone to do anything remotely as productive as you can with a hammer. Productivity is an important part of society. You cannot make money or help people watching HD videos and playing angry birds all day. So as more and more people use tablets and smartphones there will always be a set of people getting paid to do actual work and these people will always need "real" computers.

Will my smartphone cure world hunger?

The answer is no. You smartphone is basically just a toy that we give you to play with. This helps us sell advertisements to you and virtual goods.

Are mobile websites the future?

This is a difficult question to answer. Why do people enjoy spending time staring at a small screen by themselves all the time? Most are even afraid to buy anything or open thier bank portal.

Will blackberry ever die?

This question pops up everywhere. The answer is; why would blackberry die when most of the people that use it are hardcore nerds, smarty pants and business people? Will nerds and business people die off? This seems to be a case of tunnel vision.

Conclusion

There are 2 kinds of nerds in the world today; the nerds that are consumers (80%) and the nerds that are producers (20%). The smaller set benefits from having all these extra people buying apps and cheap touchscreen phones, repair shops, tech support, free voip, always connected international audience, marketing network social media advertising. However, all this activity is having a negative side effect that can been seen all over the technology world. The imbalance has led to a league of angry bird players and netflix watchers determining the fate of technology as a whole. Resources are being put towards entertaining this large and profitable section of society. This is why we can't have nice things like flying cars and better solar cells. Scientists are spending their time trying to write the next big app in ObjectC for touch screens.

So as traditional desktop users seem to dwindle but actually will remain the same, tablet users will continue to expand infinitely as we encourage more and more people to jump on the bandwangon as source of cheap entertainment and avoiding personal contact - LEAVE ME ALONE! GO PLAY ON YOUR TABLET. The people using so called "smart phones" now think that they are the master race, playing snake all day but in fact are slaves to the new "always connected" future that is upon us. It is very profitable to keep the hardware cycle constant as companies announce record sales year after year. At the same time developers/programmers are regulated to the fringes as they always were. Nothing has changed really, we will just have longer queue at the airport charging stand.

Will it fizzle out? No one can tell. They have been making cars with combustion engines for a century now - it never gets old - cheap energy. It has to do with the physics, energy and heat. Plus flying cars are kinda dangerous :( More expensive, less production cost, people can't tell the difference. People like distractions, staying high all the time. Old blossom in a new born flow.

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