Where did all the Fun in Tech go?

Over the last two weeks, as I’ve been recovering from a pretty bad infection, I’ve spent a lot of time on YouTube, watching a wild variation of history documentaries, yachting videos and tech reviews. One of my main go-to channels in the latter category has been Mr. Mobile. It was the videos on that latter channel that got me thinking. You see, one of Michael Fisher’s recurring points over the last couple of months has been that “fun” is a perfectly good reason to get a device. And honestly, the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree. Having a device that is simply fun to use, a feature that primarily sparks some geeky joy, is a perfectly good reason to have something. Yet, if you look at many tech review sites, and especially into their comment sections, it seems like this concept has become something akin to heresy in the tech world.

It seems strange to be writing about joy and fun just a few days after speculating whether this blog even has a future at all. Still, it is worth writing about. Well, it is in my eyes, and since this is my blog, my rules apply! Anyway, back to the topic. Back when I started going into the tech world myself, rather than simply using hand-me-down family laptops, the sheer variety of devices available meant that there would always be some phones, some laptops, that celebrated their idiosyncrasies and were just plain fun to use. From the original Motorola Razr to my first self-bought laptop, to the ubiquitous iPods, there were not just devices but entire device categories that seemingly just existed to thumb their noses at “established” laptops and the omnipresent Nokias of the day. The very concept of the netbook as a cheap and colourful device very much flipped a bird at the conventional grey and black “business” laptops of their time. They were simply fun to use, at least until manufacturers started forcing Windows XP onto these things. And I already mentioned Apple’s iPods, a device range where fun was the entire raison d’etre! Even the first iPhones and iPads were clearly meant to be fun devices as much as they were phones and tablets.

Yes, I'll use any excuse to dig out this image of my trusty Aspire One!

Seriously though, there's just a sense of fun and irreverence with these old netbooks that seems to be missing entirely from today's devices!

Yet, if you look around today, most devices seem to have fallen into a repeating the same pattern over and over again. From laptops to tablets to phones, you always see the same sizes, form factors, materials and even colours. Specs and benchmarks seem to be everywhere. Even Apple, a company that pioneered the concept of “fun” devices to the point of completely omitting specs from their PR, has fallen into the same routine over the last few years. It’s always the same devices with minor refreshments and some new features. Yet, even across the supposedly unbridgeable divide between iOS and Android, phones and devices have become so similar as to become effectively indistinguishable. 

What’s worse, devices that try to do something different, be they foldable phones like the Galaxy Z Flip or Z Fold series, are invariably eviscerated in any comment section. Granted, one of the websites I regularly check is the German-language portal Heise Online, whose online community is a hotbed of cynicism and conservatism driven by aging IT “professionals” who have been overtaken by industry developments and have subsequently been reduced to yelling at clouds. However, even more open-minded English language platforms often seem extremely averse to the concept of having a device that’s just fun to use.

For me personally, this is just a sad state of affairs. Granted, a device should always be powerful enough to do the job it is supposed to do, the mad days of Siemens’ Xelibri line-up should be a warning to anyone who advocates for form over function. However, Once you have hardware and software that can do the job, what’s so bad about getting a little creative with it? Why does every device have to follow the same design paradigm as all of their competitors? Whether it’s a second screen on laptops like the Asus ZenBook Duo, a device that is VERY high on my list of potential MacBook replacements, a folding screen as seen on Samsung’s Z Fold and Flip series or indeed on Lenovo’s recent foldable full-screen laptops or even just some gimmicks like small monochrome displays on the backside of a regular laptop or candy bar smartphone. All of these little twists can make a device just that little more “fun” to use. And given the time we spend on our phones and laptops these days, I mean I wrote this whole post on my iPad and MacBook Pro, such little twists may make using them a whole lot more enjoyable. And given how depressing the current state of the world is, such an injection of fun is definitely not a bad thing!