Technology is getting ridiculous. Everywhere you turn, there’s some technological revelation featuring a greased up touch screen with a colorful, sometimes, well designed interface. Seeing as I make my living as a designer, who has been responsible for creating some nice, neat interfaces of his own, you might think I’d be one of the first people to embrace this new, hi-tech trend; and while I do appreciate good design (more than, just about, anyone), I also can’t help but miss the old days, when I was a little tyke (‘was’ being used loosely there) blowing dust out of plastic cartridges til I was blue in the face.

Whatever happened to those good ol’ days when technology’s greatest triumphs included video games, featuring little 8-bit rectangles, with faces, jumping on walking mushrooms and flying turtles? Am I the only person, out there, who thinks the video gaming industry needs to take about twelve steps back and start making games that are simple enough for a six year old to kick ass at, while being fun as hell? Why does every video game, that comes out now, have to be all realistic and 3D… and why must the controllers come equipped with 27 buttons, 8 dials, a joypad, a touch screen, a vibrator, Bluetooth, a motion sensor, and 3 Filipino kids, offering their hands to assist you with your game playing needs? Did I miss something that happened over the past twenty years? Was the Nintendo Entertainment System not entertaining enough? Did people lose interest in using their brains, to decipher patterns, so as to kick Mike Tyson’s ass? I don’t get it.

I also don’t get why every electronic product on the market has to make use of a touch screen. Are touch screens cool? Absolutely. Are touch screens optimal for every possible application? Not a chance in China (I’m really not sure what that means exactly… but rolls off the tongue nicely)! Seriously, does anyone actually enjoy trying to type on a mini touch screen keyboard (like the one you might find on the iPhone)? I have thin, girly fingers and even I find hitting the right keys, on a microscopic touch screen, difficult to pull off. I can only imagine how much trouble some woolly mammoth of a man, with big sausage fingers, the size of my arm, is going to have, texting someone on an iPhone.

I think it’s time for the makers of all these flashy, new, technological gadgets to take a step back, and examine what it is that makes shit cool. If they only want to take half a step back, I will offer some advice… because if there’s anything I know, it’s that I know what it is I’m talking about… at least some of the time.

Video Game Designers
If I wanted to play a realistic game of football, I’d go outside. I want to squash cubic mushrooms, under the guise of an equally cubic plumber who is trying to save an imaginary princess that was kidnapped by some kind of giant bad-ass turtle. I don’t live in cube land, I’m not a plumber, I don’t know any princesses, or talking hoodlum turtles, I can’t jump on flags, and I can’t run forward, while towing an invisible wall, that won’t let me go back, behind me. If I could, I wouldn’t need video games.

Cell Phone Designers
Two words for you: rotary dial. Mobile phones have been around for… I don’t know, a while now, and I’ve yet to see a single model that employs the old rotary dial. Rotary dial phones were bad ass. Sure, it would probably be an epic pain in the ass to navigate menus; and sending text messages would take a little bit longer than shipping envelopes full of mail, but no one cares about those things. We want wicked-looking, old school rotary phones that we can strap to our backs. They could have backpack-like straps on the base of the phone, and maybe a phonebook, hanging on a chain, so we can look up our friend’s numbers.

Surface Computer Designers
That’s a pretty cool idea. Start putting those things in restaurants and bars.

HD TV Designers
Focus on making appealing, light weight, television frames that can be mounted in front of our faces so that we can just walk around watching real life. If you ever create a product that can produce higher definition picture than that, then feel free to start manufacturing that shit instead.

Let’s all help bring technology to its golden age of 1985!

Recap:
Innovation is better when it’s not too innovative;
Super Mario, and his brother Luigi, along with Little Mac, Link, the Ninja Turtles, the Dude from River City Ransom, Megaman and Kid Icarus can kick any new video-game-star’s ass;
Rotary Dial > Touch Screen;
Phonebook > Sim Card;
Reality > Digital Video;
Imaginary World > Reality.

Tell your friends to touch each other through the TV screen… and then adjust the contrast, ever so slightly.

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