1. Text kind of conflicts with the audience-reaction concept that the trope was built around and the nature of technology innovation that leads to this kind of reaction
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1. Text kind of conflicts with the audience-reaction concept that the trope was built around and the nature of technology innovation that leads to this kind of reaction
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- the \\\"simpler\\\" versions are more complex than they appear and are built around concepts that really did need more time and innovation to develop.
If these examples do exist for longer than a brief experimental period, we might call them \\\"ultra examples\\\". But I suspect this trope would be so empty as to justify deletion if we applied that standard. We certainly shouldn\\\'t name it after the bicycle anymore in that case, which doesn\\\'t meet that standard.
Type B. The next level is what most of the better current examples follow, including the Pennyfarthing bicycle and free mouselook controls of computer games (see the other discussions on this page).
- There IS a good reason the complex-looking thing was built first and the simple-looking thing took longer to develop...
- but something about the impression or usage of the old thing makes a layman user/viewer\\\'s intuition focus on the complex part so that it SEEMS backward.
The description briefly mentions this - it SEEMS like the simple thing would\\\'ve naturally/intuitively come first rather than the complex thing, but that doesn\\\'t mean there\\\'s NO technical or historical/contextual reason why. We should emphasize THAT element much more in the description. The laconic also doesn\\\'t contradict that point but doesn\\\'t remind about it either. It seems to me that since the trope is mainly conceived around the viewer reaction to comparing to how the two things SEEM to be designed and operate, general impression is a deciding factor much more than some kind of in-depth analysis. It makes it more subjective but there are many, many subjective tropes.
The apple-carrot vs apple pie is a good metaphor and seems like type A, but in real life would likely be type B. For example,
- Perhaps carrot-apple pie was typically baked because there was an excess of carrots which were easier to farm than most fruit, and people realized mixing apples with them would make them a tastier treat. To the food industry before the Great Orchard Innovation Boom, it was \\\"simpler\\\" to bake the carrots into pies with the apples than to bake purely apple pies as a luxury item AND figure out another good way to to sell the more efficiently-grown carrots - one product is simpler than two, in the context of this agricultural sales problem.
- Or, perhaps pies tended to burn way too easily unless you had carrots in it, so it\\\'s actually \\\"simpler\\\" to produce carrot-apple pies that aren\\\'t burned than pure apple pies that aren\\\'t burned, until baking techniques improved enough that it was technically possible to consistently bake the latter.
In both cases, a layman ignorant of the history and technical principles might look back and say \\\"two ingredients instead of one? one is so much better AND so much simpler!\\\" despite the one-ingredient version NOT being so simple for people at the time.
By the way, if anybody knows why strawberry-rhubarb pie is a thing and strawberry is not, please share haha. (I assume strawberry pies might just be too sweet on their own, making that an example of \\\"it\\\'s not as good, people like things that are better\\\", which is PeopleSitOnChairs.)
Type C. Basically just TechnologyMarchesOn. An example is justified simply by the fact that something is easier to use in the modern version, and ease of use implies simplicity from a certain point of view. However, if a layman can look at it and see that the device clearly DID get more complex to make it easier to use, it\\\'s not this trope. One example discussed already in another thread is the printing press - a single wooden block for a document is clearly simpler in concept than a whole bunch of individual movable letter pieces that must be typeset before printing, even if the modern system is much easier for the printer to operate over the course of multiple documents. Another is minivans with two car doors - sure it\\\'s simpler for the customer to be able to access the van from either side rather than following the \\\"complex\\\" process of walking around the van and THEN opening the door, but it\\\'s obvious to the layman that putting 2 doors in a box is a bit more work than just putting 1 in.
Interesting to note that as technology gets good enough it becomes less clear to the layman what had to happen, so Type C shifts to type B. For instance, \\\"talking to Siri in plain English is so much simpler than having to learn the interface of a whole program\\\" is a justification for this trope if you don\\\'t understand that English language and sound itself has a huge amount of ways of expressing a single idea, and that clicking a clearly defined area on the screen is way simpler. This is like an inversion of ClarkesThirdLaw where instead of the tech appearing as MAGIC, the fundamental tech appears as REALLY OBVIOUS tech such that you don\\\'t know why the ancient innovators had to spend any time on it at all.
In the next week I plan to categorize current tropes to test my theories, then plan for a description rewrite if it seems justified. I certainly plan to move the TechnologyMarchesOn examples to that page for cases where the old thing IS obviously simpler in technology or complexity.
