I must admit I have the advantage of being the descendant of multi generational farmers..
and having spent half my life (the first of course) growing up on a farm, learning first hand, as well as university study in horticulture ..

monoculture : def. by cambridge dictionary:
noun:
meaning: the practice of growing only one crop or keeping only one type of animal on an area of farm land.
: an area of farm land on which only one crop is grown or one type of animal is kept, or the crops grown or animals kept there.
: a culture that is the same in many different places.

a monoculture is an imposed human construct.
diversity is not allowed in a monoculture. It defeats the purpose of it.

The lake that is drying up is a natural process...
the invading species which are doing so in the lake bed ..are a natural process...
that is a natural process.
simply because hogweed is beginning to invade ...is invading or has invaded an ecosystem...doesn't make "it" the monocultural ecosystem...nor does not mean it becomes or automatically is a monocultural environment.
It is an oxy***** (really?? this is not a derogatory word to censor..) to call something a moncultural ecosystem...it is in fact anathema to one another.

That isn't how nature works.

We disagree here. A true duopoly exists over the majority of users and devices whereas prior attempts have mostly been failures, soon to fail, or will fail sooner than later. Such is the case as Maemo, MeeGo, FirefoxOS, Windows Mobile, Ubuntu Touch, PalmOS, WebOS, SavaJe OS, Tizen and so forth. All of those are in a different state of failure if not already in the history books.

ChromeOS running Linux is perhaps a bump on the road to offering something useful to a new generation of users. But for the older folks that's been around for ages - it means perhaps far too little.

Who knows. But I do not think the mobile OS landscape is more diverse at this very moment. No real options have stood the test of time like iOS and Android over the last decade. Before that, Symbian reigned supreme.

A duopoly is better than monopoly, gerbick Which was exactly my point. There was a time when you had a choice between Symbian and, err, nothing. That choice grew and shrunk over time and will no doubt continue doing so.

Too bad this duopoly has the monopoly on not being anywhere where I’d rather be and use. There were better suited past choices that did not garner enough support for continued development.

And I avoided Symbian for as long as I could. I did not like it at all. Still hate saying its name.

That makes two of us, gerbick. I find it infinitely puzzling how some of the same people who now grumble about Apple and Google also worship Nokia. The irony must be utterly lost on them.

It's called Nostalgia, the golden memories of past era.
No matter the past era was all f****d up and generally everybody was miserable

Nostalgia does seem to paint a rosier picture oftentimes.

You'd think that future iterations of technology would have learned how to accomplish things in a better way.

So far, I'm not seeing it. Personally waiting on the day we all can look at this "app" mentality and see them for the black boxes that they truly have become full of potential data misuse and collecting personal data and selling it to any interested bidder.

Sigh. Perhaps I might be better off with a dumb phone after all.

Well...
I know that the given is that the past always is remembered to be better than it really was...

But...the alternate spin to it... is that...compared to the ever increasing morass of crap that piles on top of us all with every passing year...
Perhaps the past IS indeed far far far more appealing ...
than the present ...
or heaven forbid...
what nightmare awaits in the near future...

I foresee in the future that everyone will have no option to dine out...except at Taco Bell...because it will be the only survivor of the Great Fast-Food Wars...
No wait..that was "Demolition Man"

No..
I foresee a terrible terrible future...for us all...
Dominated utterly by the mergered monster "MicroAppleDroid"


(ok ...I think I am done my cross-thread-skipping lunacy...time to go back to my hookah....)

Well, that explains everything!