Nifty, keen, groovy, cool
by Bob on December 29, 2007
An old friend of mine use to say "nifty, keen, groovy, cool" every time she was excited about something or someone.
It was a very melodic phrase, although a little 60s-ish but it really sounded great out of her and so bubbly. One could hardly resist her enthusiasm.
I keep wondering these days now, even with all the excessively interesting gadgets that one can buy and use, whether today's items are in fact, "nifty, keen, groovy, and cool". Or are today's gadgets just utilitarian and banal.
As the number of smart electronic high-functionality chips and integrated circuits increases, the fun seems to be taken out of gadgets. Seems to be. One is unsure it is actually true, and not a trap of fitful nostalgia.
Electrical Engineers used to design with discrete components and on paper with little computer assistance. Today, things are designed with automation, CAD/CAM, and huge catalogues of pre-fabricated electronic chips with special or general purposes which can be employed in designing and implementing a new idea.
Clearly a bit like cooking food as a chef but using pre-cooked ingredients.
In theory, it's all supposed to make it "faster, better and cheaper" to design, implement, and assamble new products. The "cradle-to-coffin" product design cycle.
Something might get lost in the over-use of catalogue circuits, but like any other addiction of sorts, one is hard pressed to stop using such technological tidbits. Engineers are now accustomed to using pre-fab circuits in their overall design.
The question then is: are the pre-fab and pre-functioned circuits and chips essentially influencing the way the designers think and make them think in a certain constricted way so that the end product becomes banal ?
One wonders. And worries. For if it is so, then a non-sentient robot would do just as well as a human in the designing, implementation and production.
HAL in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" comes to mind.
The seeming age-old unalterable principles of good design are being affected by all this, although good design principles should be ageless and immutable.
So we yearn for a emotional "nifty, keen, groovy, cool" after a product is unveiled. We don't seem to be getting as many these days. Ah, but for the snows of yesteryear as Francois Villon wrote centuries ago. But technology and progress, the twins of seeming illusion, march on. Nifty, keen, groovy, cool.