Innovation is not necessarily the time saver and the great simplifier people try to make it out to be.
Take for example the picture frame and the gradual conversion to the digital frame,
and the added complications it has added to our lives.
Like digital cameras, the digital frame has cut down the cost of photography (remember how much money you used to drop on the cost of buying and processing films every month). However, the digital picture frame hasn’t helped people whose basic grasp of photography is limited to not much more than ‘the big button is the one that makes the picture’.
And let’s face it, that group includes you, me and much of the human race. This doesn’t make life easy for anyone selling wholesale digital photo frames.
The size doesn’t seem to be a factor in how confused we can get when it comes to digital screens and getting the images that are right for them. Someone with a 7 digital photo frame can be just as confused as someone with a 8 inch digital photo frame and heaven help the poor person with the 10 digital frame.
And as gadgets gradually converge into one and people can do more and more with one thing things are going to get more complex too with people having to grapple with photo frames that are also a digital TV receiver, might work as a digital video frame or could even play music.
So before we get into the wiz-bang wizardry that has turned cell phones and media players into incomprehensible devices let’s have a look at a couple of