How Many Innovations that Are Truly Useful Can You Name?

The New Year vacation is normally the time when I reevaluate the results of the previous year and consider plans for the upcoming year. This year these thoughts are more or less focused on various tech-related aspects for two reasons. The first reason includes me getting an iPod Touch as a gift and spending probably too much time in the App Store downloading and buying apps - and then even more time playing with them on the gadget.

The second reason involves SEC and the freshly announced Google’s Nexus One phone (though I still fail to understand why this particular phone deserves to be the Google phone while the very first G1 manufactured by HTC did not). This is a big announcement that seems to be everywhere and many tech blogs eagerly participate in the hype initiated by Google for the device. Of course Google’s hype machine is a powerful one so you can hardly avoid Nexus One online, no matter where you happen to go.

But my New Year’s process of reevaluating the values has made me think of all this hype probably too critically - and ask myself if the hype is truly deserved. After all, does this new device actually change the world or represent any revolution in the human society? Unfortunately I can’t find any reason to say so at all - even though I admit that this is an impressive device that is probably very much worse buying if you really need to buy a new smart phone.

But how many innovations can we count that are truly useful and DO change lives at least for some people? Come to think of it, I don’t think I will really be able to name many of them among those that we have hyped so much over the recent years. The point is that we do see continuous innovations everywhere with new gadgets introduced and progress demonstrated everywhere - but only rare gadgets really deserve the hype they get for the lack of revolution in them.

After all, what does switching from one laptop to a new more powerful one means for you? It will probably increase your productivity but I have to admit it: buying a new laptop every 1.5-2 years is probably a little too frequently. Though I have one excuse that is probably good enough: I always find a buyer for the old one so it is not simply thrown away or something as it keeps working elsewhere while I improve my personal productivity (and working experience) and help laptop manufacturers increase their profits.

But come to think of it, exactly what does buying an iPhone to replace your current phone means to you? Of course, you are staying more connected to the world and can use Twitterific and fabulous Facebook application to update all your friends on your exact location or activities this very moment. But how actually useful is this given that mere months before you thought that a quick phone call or text message to your spouse or parents was perfectly enough to inform people of your whereabouts? And if you secretly spend most of your time on a train or in a traffic jam secretly playing Tetris, I think you’ll simply have to agree that this is hardly an innovation that is worth investing your money and natural resources involved in manufacturing an iPhone.

Really, the only innovation that seems to actually deserve all the hype to me is Kindle and overall popularization of ebook readers pushed by Amazon with its Kindle device and availability of so many book titles to Kindle owners and users of Kindle applications for various platforms (Kindle itself, PC, iPhone). I think that the vast majority of new gadgets introduced only make us switch from one device to a newer one with more functions (many of those we will never use but who cares) without thinking of all the resources wasted to manufacture the new device when your existing one is still pretty good and useful - and you would have been happy with it for a few more years unless the market pushed a shinier alternative your way.

Kindle is different and this is why I insist it is useful: it makes you switch your habits from consuming more and more natural resources to cutting that consumption at least where it comes to paper that your books and magazines are printed on. This only simple habit - if it grows popular enough which I hope it will - will enable us to save many trees on this planet and one-time investment into a reading device will keep you going for years with plenty of books that are 100% green as there is absolutely nothing physical in their manufacture at all and the only thing you buy when you buy an ebook is the content itself, not the paper it needs to be printed on.

At that I have to mention that I myself don’t own a Kindle for now but in the first few days of 2010 I have grown totally addicted to Kindle for iPhone application spending hours reading on my iPod Touch instead of buying the books in paperbacks. I might very well consider buying a Kindle in the future when I know exactly that the habit of reading books electronically is something that I truly enjoy but for now I know for sure that Amazon has done a great job popularizing reading the books electronically - and Kindle (and other ereaders) should really be hyped probably even more than they now are because this device represents one example of consumerism that is actually healthy for the environment which is so rare in innovations that I can’t even name anything equally useful at all. Help me if you can in the comments.