A great shift happened in the radio control aircraft world while I grew up. As lithium battery and electronics technology developed and became cheap for consumers, electric RC aircraft quickly eclipsed the popularity of gas-powered ones. With this shift came the proliferation of ready-to-fly electric quadcopters (drones), which ultimately pushed my custom electronics service out of business.
But then it all seemed to reached its peak. What more can you ask of a drone that has miles of range, HD livestreaming, and all the bells and whistles? What more can you ask from your RC helicopter when you can barely follow its flight path already? How much faster do you want to slap 15 pounds of carbon fiber around in the air and go 0-80mph in half a second?
As far as I see it, the returns from here on out will continue to diminish in scale and scope. The changes that new RC tech will provide will barely impact the flying experience, if at all. The minute, edge-case radio setup options and infinitely fine-tune-able flight stabilizers will serve more of a purpose to keep the pilot engaged with a complex project, as opposed to adding much to their base experience of actually flying the aircraft. The base experience of launching, flying, and landing won’t change.
I see a similar pattern everywhere. So much of technology seems to have peaked and there is nowhere to go. Consider YouTube. How much more content do we need on YouTube? How much faster do we want our screens to load the videos? How much greater resolution than 8K do we need to enjoy the videos? If we froze the tech we have at its current abilities, the average user wouldn’t even notice. The same goes for so much of technology. What more do you need from a lawnmower, a speaker system, a phone, a car? With the markets that dominate the development of those products churning out new versions regularly – what great advancement do you think will “change the game”, so to speak, of that tech?
This isn’t a diatribe against technological progress at the cutting edge – it’s incredible what we are still developing. But I have made the point before that things are overbaked, and there’s little point to play the game of consumerism to chase the latest shiny thing that ultimately won’t effect the base experience, and sometimes even make it worse.
But, the question has to be asked: What do we do when we reach this point?
Seriously: what do we do with ourselves when we’ve reached the relative conclusion of a technological application or a product in general? Some hobbies, like RC, are kind of complete in a sense. Sure, more models come out each year – different shapes and sizes of aircraft with different flight characteristics – but the core hobby itself is unchanged. New videos come out on YouTube, but the core experience of watching videos on a screen is unchanged. New lawnmowers are released, the application is unchanged. New cars, new phones…
There’s no need for us to develop in the same direction as before to (literally) get the tech off the ground – instead, we expand the complexity. Once the basic functionality of a system is achieved, we as humans have a tendency to leave the fundamentals alone and tinker with all the finicky details to try to squeeze out more performance, speed, features, complexities. Engineers live and die fighting the cutting edge to be relevant in a field that is already overbaked, sometimes re-inventing the wheel itself, justifying their existence as part of the group of tinkerers and engineers pushing the field “forwards” and simultaneously creating the conditions for them to be the hero when the complex new systems fail. Stop touching it!
An in-group forms out of the people involved in the unnecessarily tedious/complex knowledge base that’s created by such an effort. An out-group forms of those who don’t care, because their model airplane flies great without the latest radio with a 4,000-line software update that’s bound to be buggy. The locals still hike in high-top hiking boots, cotton t-shirts and Jansport packs on a nice day in July… and survive.
So, What do you do when there’s no aspect of your hobby to develop that’ll reasonably effect the base experience, and you aren’t deluded by the latest shiny piece of tech? How do you keep the hobby interesting?
The answer lies in changing your perception of the base experience itself. Over the years, the joy of flying a well-built RC airplane has become corrupted by the existence of the Joneses who are doing something complex and shiny. The psychic energy expended to wonder about those features, and what you were “missing” from not having them, undermined your connection to the sanctity of the base experience itself. You fool! Master and enjoy the fundamentals and continue developing your skills and headspace to connect with those fundamentals directly! You have been caught in a side quest! Your development is endless if you pay attention to the base environment. To play the gadgetry game is to involve yourself in a realm you can never beat – there is nothing TO beat but the Joneses themselves, which is a worthless endeavor.
A few years back when I was riding BMX regularly, I met a guy at the track who confidently mentioned that his time was worth $50/hr at this stage in his life. I shrugged. Tech or finance guy maybe? After a bit, I blew a tire and he gave me a lift home. I think about him sometimes and wonder if he enjoyed his time at all at the track. It seemed like a good way to ruin the fun to think about it terms of value per hour. The entire headspace involved with valuing time and squeezing value out of an experience is a negative one. The thought itself “Shouldn’t I be getting MORE out of this because I spent so much?” is negative. Consider the base action involved. Literally, figure out what you want to do – the action itself – and focus on that, not the bells and whistles involved in a premium package.
The magic of the base experience and the sanctity of the fundamentals themselves are punctured by unnecessary complexity and undermined by consumerism. Ground yourself!
Cheers,
Daniel