The Never Ending Change of Technology

By: Rick McCallion

Once again - I start off this month's technology article with a quote.

Louis V. Gerstner once said "Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding." Gerstner was the CEO of IBM from 1993 until 2002. I would venture to say that his reign at IBM was during the years of sweeping technology changes.

You may recall that last month, I discussed the importance of maintaining humanity in our digital world. This month's article - as promised - will be a forum to illustrate how the technology has served to enrich our lives.

Make no mistake, barring catastrophic events in our society, technology is here to stay. I am of the opinion that this technology can serve us - or master us - it is up to us to dictate the relationship between technology and our society.

First and foremost, technology is clearly a time saver. For fear of dating myself, I was born and raised in the "pre-computer age". Yes - there were computers in the 50's and 60's (the ENIAC is one of the first - it was announced in 1946) but they were not integral parts of our society. Research for homework was done in libraries; banking was always done in front of a teller instead of in front of buttons and keys. Certainly, we lose the personal touch when using technology for these, but there can be no doubt that it saves us significant amounts of time.

Last year, I remember watching "A Christmas Carol", my all-time favourite Christmas movie. I was very amused by the fact that Bob Cratchit and his homies had to very manually maintain the ledgers. Today, no company can exist without streamlined processes such as accounting. I think that every dollar that is not spent on administrative services is a dollar that can be spent on research and development or otherwise improving the products.

There can be no question that in today's business world, each company must look for that tool that can give them the competitive edge. The use of technology enables a company to streamline their processes and therefore reduce costs - or perhaps its use is as a R&D tool and it allows the company to be more innovative. Regardless of how the technology is used in the workplace - it is clearly here to stay.

In the business world, I cannot imagine not being able to get technical support online. Certainly, there are companies that just don't have the budget for this, but as a software development professional, my job would be severely impacted if I were not able to go to a specific support forum or to be able to Google and find others who have encountered similar problems to see their solution.

The impact of technology on our social networks cannot be argued. I won't use this forum to discuss the downside of social interactions in the electronic world - as I touched on this in my previous article, but there are significant benefits to our social lives.

The first significant impact of technology on our social lives was with the introduction of bulletin board systems. The doors were open to find others with similar interests or mindsets. Even before the proliferation of the Internet, there were systems such as CompServe which filled this type of need. With the advent of instant messaging and networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc..., it has made personal communications much easier.

For me personally, I found that technology served me well when I was in the hospital in May and it will do so again when I am back in during October. The ability to send and receive text messages gave me comfort when I was feeling somewhat isolated. Being able to communicate with family and friends made my visit just a little easier to handle.

One of my favourite "uses" of technology relates to entertainment. I frequently listen to streaming radio online. In fact, I do not own a "conventional" radio. Most major radio station websites offer the feature to be able to listen online.

I do have friends who exclusively watch TV and movies online, but I certainly haven't graduated to that yet! I do enjoy Youtube sometimes - especially as a way for me to try new music artists - it's a great way to be able to listen to a new group and see if it was my proverbial cup of tea!

Certainly, I very much enjoy movies - and very often, I will visit IMDB.COM either before or after a movie to learn more about the movie or the people involved in the production of it.

In my mind, technology is like so many things in our lives - with balance, it is a good thing, but when it is used to excess then it begins to hinder our lives.

Advances in technology will not slow down. There will be new and better improved services. There will be many carrots dangled in front of our noses promising instant gratification or to give us access to information or services in ways that we've never seen - or possibly imagined - before. It's up to us to determine how technology integrated into our lives and it is indeed our responsibility to ensure that technology remains a tool and not the master.

Quick tip for this issue -When turning on your computer, look carefully for a prompt for a key to be pressed to enter the computer's setup and press this key. Among the information listed there is the type of hard disk that your computer has and its properties. Write this down and save it somewhere safe. That way - if your setup is lost and the computer no longer has a hard disk defined, you can run the setup again and re-enter the hard disk properties.

Term for this issue - last week, the term ROM (Read Only Memory) was introduced. Related to this term, this month's term is RAM which stands for Random Access Memory. RAM differs from ROM in that RAM is temporary. Once the computer is turned off, then the contents of RAM are lost. RAM is an area of memory where programs such as Microsoft Word or Internet Explorer are run. When you create a MS Word document - it is created and maintained in RAM and this is why you need to save documents before turning off the computer as it is volatile memory.

Website for this issue - Volunteering has been part of my life for a number of years now. A very good website for someone who is interested in volunteering their time is http://volunteer.ca/en/en-home.

"Rick is a seasoned software developer with over 25 years of experience in designing and developing systems. In addition to the software development experience, he is also experienced in training users of various skills and assisting organizations in determining their information technology needs."