For years now there have been some principles that drive the technology forward. It is not a justification, continuous or material standard, but more to do with emotion and passion. This is called the WOW Factor and it describes the emotional state that you specify when you see a new category of technology that's completely and totally breathtaking. The first time you saw an ultra-portable, super slim notebook, the initial euphoria of using a digital camera for the first time, the pure bliss of wire free surfing on Wi-Fi computer, the initial shock of seeing the clarity of a High Definition Plasma Display, the pure sensory experience of hearing a perfectly tuned 5.1 Home theater - that Ladies and Gentlemen is called WOW Factor, and unfortunately it may be time for us to bid farewell to this amazing experience.
Face it, when was the last time you really felt the earth has moved when you had either heard or seen anything new in the consumer technology arena. Innovations and inventions in this area have been few and far between for quite sometime now. Things have moved to an evolutionary phase, and adds features that always comes to mind. The iPod is in its fifth generation, and still looks pretty much the same, plasma screens have entered their eighth generation and still suffer from burn in, the CD has been around forever and still gets scratched, cell phones still crash, cameras continue to generate red-eye, laptop batteries exploding all over the world and all it takes is 3 wrong keystrokes to bring your computer to a grinding halt.
About the biggest thing that we all have been waiting for the past few years has been High Definition Displays. While it has been slow to come, today most companies deliver some groundbreaking products.They are rock solid, crystal clear, larger than ever, has great color depth and incredible resolution. But what now? These screens are already as clear as the human eye can perceive. Going any clearer or increase the resolution further will be a zero sum game with very few benefits. They cannot make them bigger that even the 110 inches weighs about 400 pounds and need 8 people to carry them. The fact that the house doors and maybe a few walls must be demolished to carry the TV - can be another dampener.
Consider the other holy grail of Technology. We all want it lighter, thinner and more elegant. Today we have hybrid cars, video cameras so small they barely fit in our hands, MP3 players the size of the nail, our notebooks so slender that they look like they may snap into two and phones that are clean Featherweight. While these Micromachines are radical units - the small ergonomics and form factor may have affected the law of diminishing returns. Have these products been so diminutive that they are now effectively useless? Our fingers are already too big and clumsy to press the buttons on our gadgets, our eyes can hardly make their small screens and most of us can not grasp or control such tiny gadgets properly. It's just not possible for us to make them any sleek or tiny without sacrificing ease of use altogether. Technology will still continue to enthrall us - but only to a small surge. It may be time for us to embrace the fact that from here on technology will only move forward in small incremental steps. It's light out for WOW technology, and the sooner we all realize it - the lower the chances of being disappointed.
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