There are too many screens, time to go back to gauges
&gt; Screens are also less likely to break than mechanically moving gauges<p>What? If you buy a 30 year old car, the gauges are most likely still intact, and original. If you have an older house, things like the water gauges (or even regular clock gauges) are also decades old. I want to see the screen that will work for &gt; 20 years in a constantly moving and vibrating environment, under massive temperature changes, without any additional care or repairs or replacement.<p>Take passenger information displays in public transit. Not until a few years ago, it was still common that the head signs in trains, buses or subways where mechanical. It was often just a paper roll [0] that was adjusted to display the correct destination, or even just a plate that was changed by the conductor [1]. Things like car numbers or seat reservations were displayed by simple paper signs. Fast-forward to the 90ies, where at least in Europe, they began to replace these things by LCDs. After a few years, it was normal to see trains with broken head signs, broken car numbers, and broken reservation systems [2]. Fast-forward to today, where it is now en vogue to use full-fledged displays everywhere. The result (at least in the towns I use public transportation) are regularly broken displays [3] [4] [5] that even when they work, often offer no advantage over LCD or LED or even mechanical display from a passenger perspective. They just look more modern. Add to this that the display software is mostly some variant of Windows with a poorly built and designed web application running on it.<p>Think of all the people, all the knowledge, all the hours, all the resources and all the energy required to build and run a full-fledged high-resolution display, an operating system, the web application and a central server in the vehicle running those displays - all to replace a simple roll of paper <i>with a less reliable solution</i>! As computer scientists and software developers, this is what pays us - but as soon as the rest of the society realizes what is going on, I fear that there will a massive backlash.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;c&#x2F;c5&#x2F;2009-08-19-obus-eberswalde-by-RalfR-03.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;c&#x2F;c5&#x2F;2009-08-...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;5&#x2F;50&#x2F;Wupper-Expresszugschild.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;5&#x2F;50&#x2F;Wupper-E...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;soscheescho.de&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;wirre-anzeige-am-bahnhof.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;soscheescho.de&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;wirre-anze...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.pinimg.com&#x2F;originals&#x2F;06&#x2F;33&#x2F;aa&#x2F;0633aa8ad996cfeb793672266cc99f44.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.pinimg.com&#x2F;originals&#x2F;06&#x2F;33&#x2F;aa&#x2F;0633aa8ad996cfeb7936...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.pinimg.com&#x2F;originals&#x2F;33&#x2F;a0&#x2F;b7&#x2F;33a0b7ac6e5563f48f668aaa10cb2c8e.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.pinimg.com&#x2F;originals&#x2F;33&#x2F;a0&#x2F;b7&#x2F;33a0b7ac6e5563f48f66...</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pbs.twimg.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;DkI_ZEbXsAEcknf.jpg:large" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pbs.twimg.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;DkI_ZEbXsAEcknf.jpg:large</a>