SILICON
SILIC
CHIP
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Editorial Viewpoint
Hand-held devices discourage creativity
There’s no denying that smartphones and tablets are
very handy devices. They give you the ability to look up
information just about any time and anywhere. For example, there are times when I need to know the pinout
of a device in front of me. The easiest and quickest way
is often to do a web search on its part code and then
read the data sheet on my phone’s screen.
But I don’t understand people who think that they
can ‘get rid of’ their computers because they have a smartphone and/or a
tablet. Sure, these devices are computers, and they can do many things that
a desktop computer can. But they can’t do it all, nor can they do many of
those things particularly well.
To a large extent, replacing your proper computer with a mobile device
relegates you to a being a ‘consumer’ of information, rather than a creator
or producer of it.
Even something as simple as writing a moderately-sized e-mail becomes a
difficult task on a smartphone or tablet. Typing hundreds of words becomes
a chore, and the risk of mistakes becomes much higher (auto-correct doesn’t
allways get it write!). An external keyboard makes this easier, but the small
portable ones are not very nice to use, and it’s hard to type quickly on them.
And while there are millions of “Apps” available for Android and iOS,
surprisingly few have the features you need to be creative (besides drawing and painting, which tablets have always been good for). You can pretty
much forget about drawing up circuits or PCBs in a CAD program. All the
ECAD software I’ve tried on Android devices has been a joke.
Even if a proper ECAD program was ported to a mobile platform, and the
device’s hardware could handle it, using it with a small(ish) touchscreen
would be a nightmare. It would take hours to do something that would take
minutes on a desktop or notebook computer. Without a proper mouse and
keyboard, your productivity would be virtually nil.
Another vital aspect that a lot of people forget about is ergonomics. You
can’t really hold a mobile device in front of your face for very long, so you
end up having to lay it down on a desk (or prop it up on a stand). But then
you’re looking down for hours at a small screen, causing neck and eye strain,
and you’ll get sore arms from prodding the screen.
A properly set-up PC does not have this problem. With a good keyboard,
mouse, screen and chair you can be productive all day without straining
anything. (It’s arguably healthier to avoid sitting down all day, but unfortunatey, this is the reality of modern office work.)
So I’m concerned for the younger generations who are growing up surrounded by mobile devices. They may have limited exposure to ‘proper’
computers. I suppose school will expose them to computers and productivity software, hopefully giving them opportunities to learn how to code, write
prose, draw diagrams and so on. That should spur their creativity.
I think it’s essential to be creative and ‘make’ stuff, whether that is art, science or engineering-based, or something else. Of course, you don’t need a
computer to do that, but more and more these days, computers are involved
in creative activities. I can even imagine sculptors taking advantage of 3D
printers to create tricky shapes.
So, keep your computer. Be productive. I don’t know about you, but I get
bored with passive entertainment after a while, and I have to go off and do
something productive. It’s just so much more engaging, and you get a much
better sense of satisfaction from having done something useful.
Nicholas Vinen
24-26 Lilian Fowler Pl, Marrickville 2204
4
Silicon Chip
Australia’s electronics magazine
siliconchip.com.au
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