Happy World Toilet Day!

Yes - that's right - can you IMAGINE that it's World Toilet Day already?  I can't believe that another 365 days have flushed by!

Now, I'm getting a handle on how to tie this in to technology.  After all, technology <> toilets, right?  Wrong!

Kohler has introduced the latest high tech toilet with it's own tablet PC built in to control it's functionality.  Now having a remote control for the loo - THAT my friends, is a movement!  Said remote controls lighting, cleansing spray action, general sanitation? 

Sorry, but I will give the high-tech toilet the poo-poo.  I'm just scared that I will be so dependant on this technlogy that I will be unable to "go" on my own.  It's been a long time that I haven't been totally in control of my own...ummm....functions...for lack of a better word (to put it delicately) and I am bound and determined to not go with the flow on this one!

Blogging in 2011

Just noticed the other day at how few blog entries that I had in 2011 - especially in the last 2/3 of it.  It's been a crazy year for me with lots of real world stuff going on to distract me, but I'm hoping that I'll get back to normal.

Google Sketchy...

...this is how I'm feeling by Google's recent announcement that they're taking on the big boys of the music industry, specifically iTunes.

First of all, that's a heck of a mountain to climb!  I don't know that the market saturation is for Apple in the download purchase area, but I'd have to imagine that they're not only the leaders but they're dominant.   It will be a heck of a battle to gain market share I'd think.

Also, let's face it, Google is monolithic and they've had some great products and innovations, but they've also had their share of misses that sucked wind.   I think that the folks at Google will throw lots of jello at the wall and if half of them stick, then that's great, but I think it's safe to say that there's not a lot of panic in Cuperinto

Happy Birthday to You!!!

Wow, I never knew!  Today is a very momentous day in the field of technology.  The very first single-chip microprocessor was introduced on this day 40 years ago!  The chip - the 4004 was a 4 bit chip running a slug's pace of 740khz and it had programmable memory of...4 K.

I'm sure that a lot of you like "big whoop", but this is the "Adam" to just about anything with a processor, from your cellphone to your car, your microwave, everything.

To give some context on how far technology has gone in the past 40 years, the current processor would run at maybe 4.0ghz.  Comparing this to the 740khz of the 4004 is like comparing thousands to billions.  Quite a difference.

For me though, it's the memory.  To have 4,000 characters of memory available - I just can't fathom that compared to the capacity of a modern processor.

I very badly want to fast forward 40 MORE years and see how technology has increased exponentially!

"The sheer number of advances in the next 40 years will equal or surpass all of the innovative activity that has taken place over the last 10,000 years of human history," said Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer, in a written statement.  

I'm not sure if this statement excites me, or scares the beejesus out of me - probably a bit of both!

Technological Anesthesia

The topic for this article came to me in a flash as I was innocuously talking about movies with a colleague of mine. We were talking about Remembrance Day and she was telling me how she couldn’t watch “Saving Private Ryan” as it was just too much for her; it was just much too intense. My response to her was that she’s very correct, that it’s an extraordinarily powerful movie and it wasn’t easy to watch. Further, I went on to say that I had a feeling that what Saving Private Ryan portrayed was probably very close to reality. My thoughts were that I didn’t mind the fact that movie was so graphic because the intent was to show how horrible war was – that the reality wasn’t John Wayne shooting some guy with a ten gallon hat who dropped down in a very tidy and dainty death.

Now, this started me thinking…

As a teen, I was a big fan of Star Trek. This conversation reminded me of one of my absolute favourite episodes. In this particular episode, the gang from the U.S.S. Enterprise was called upon to try to resolve a war between two feuding planets that had been going on for centuries. As Captain Kirk began to understand the situation, he came to the realization that these two societies had come up with a creative and “civilized” manner of warfare.

Instead of resolving their disputes with conventional warfare, each side had a computer which randomly selected citizens from the other planet. These chosen few dutifully marched towards the chambers where they were zapped into non-existence. The uppity-ups of society applauded this approach saying how humane, cost-efficient it was, not to mention the total lack of collateral damage. Kirk’s inevitable end of episode soliloquy stated that THIS was the whole problem – that they weren’t experiencing the travesty and the destruction of war so they didn’t have the incentive to resolve the conflict.

I relate this episode to something that I call technological anesthesia. Simply put, excessive use of technology in our day to day lives can numb our senses and distort reality.

There was a recent study where doctors noticed a phenomena where young male adults who normally are…how shall I delicately say – enamored with the thought of the physical attributes of the opposite sex are actually being diagnosed with withering sex drives. Their findings are that in many of these cases, these are men who spend just a bit too much time viewing the plethora of pornography online, and as a result, they’re quite desensitized.

There’s another aspect of technological anesthesia which becomes increasingly prevalent, and this is what are referred to as “trolls”. A troll is a term for someone who logs into a message board and posts something inflammatory or offensive, just to cause a ruckus. Many times when on message boards, there are “flame wars” or insults lobbed back and forth between combatants. The problem is that when we interact online, we often forget that there are actually people on the other end – all that we see are the digital personas and such, who cares if they’re offended or hurt by our words? It goes without saying that if you took all of the citizens of one specific inflammatory message board and put them all in a room and forced them to talk and engage with each other, I think that it’s safe to assume that the bravado which is displayed online would not be nearly as common, lest someone get a poke in the nose otherwise.

In my mind, this in a nutshell is one of the biggest problems with online communication, interaction and social networking. We have lost that humanity and are only seeing the bits and bytes of letters flowing across the screen without giving due consideration that the other person is someone’s daughter, someone’s father or someone’s aunt.

Tyrannosaurus Techs

There are many that believe that one of the contributing factors to the demise of the dinosaurs is the fact that from an evolutionary perspective, they were unable to adapt. In today’s society, this is exactly the context in which we refer to the same concept with people, products or companies today.

I find that with technology, it’s not always easy to adapt. I think that one of the main reasons why, is that technology grows at an ever-increasing pace and we simply don’t have time to get accustomed or to with the new technology. This is – I believe – one of the primary reasons why there is resistance to technological change. There is a comfort level that we have, with what we’re accustomed to, and to have that pulled out from under our feet can be very disconcerting.

However, this change is for most intents and purposes inevitable. Not to say that everyone has to adapt to technological change right away. If existing technology fits within your particular lifestyle, then all is good. As a matter of fact, I think that sometimes people that are able to buck the trend a bit have a certain charm!

I sometimes get asked what the impetus is for the subjects of my articles. For the most part, it’s just very random thoughts or experiences in my daily life.

In this instance, I was riding the subway and in the age of iPods and Blackberries and various other MP3-ish type of devices, I was just totally amused by the gentleman who was listening to music and then pulled out his CD player from his pocket, took out the CD and inserted a new one. As someone who listens to a lot of music, I was just aghast, I can’t imagine just having 3 or 4 CDs of music with me, but that’s just me. If this is how he enjoyed his music, then all the power to him.

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I’ve seen so much change in technology. This rapid rate of change isn’t isolated to my generation – it will continue to escalate in the generations of my children, and their children.

This is what makes it important to remain open-minded with regards to technology. I think that this is ever more critical when working in the technology sector. Not only is it necessary to keep up to date with technology professionally, but to a very large extent, one has to be very forward thinking and be able to anticipate where the technology is going.

It’s like when we buy that new computer – based on the current “newest technology”. How often do we get the computer home and we are benefitting from the latest and greatest? And how long is it before we sit there, mumbling and cursing at this dinosaur on the desktop, while casting a sideways glance at the latest offerings from Dell?

I think that the biggest lesson that I’ve learned from having thought through this article is that it is critical to identify where I need to stay current and not to be a technological dinosaur. However, I think what is also equally important is to be able to take a look at those aspects of technology where maybe it’s okay for me to stay within my comfort zone. As I see how many different aspects of technology are changing, I’m gaining the wisdom to realize that I can’t, nor should I, try to keep up with all technology.

Instead, I will pick and choose where I need to stay with the crowd, and where I’ll be equally comfortable being the equivalent of the guy on the subway listening to his CD player.

Caught With My Technological Shorts Down!

Okay, not really a great visual to start off with for this article, but probably very appropriate.

One of the things that I’ve noticed with technology is that it changes gradually. Technology builds upon existing technology and improves on it. Very rarely – if ever at all, has there been an instance where I’m totally taken aback by an advance in technology. Like a biological evolution, it is very gradual. After all, when man lost his tail, it’s not like we (as in our ancestors, obviously not us!) woke up one morning to find a pile of tails on the ground!

There has been an innovation that has totally caught me by surprise, and quite honestly, the more that I am exposed to this technology, the more amazed I am. I believe that we are the cusp of an innovation that will – without being overly dramatic – change the course of our society.

What I refer to is a new technology called 3D Printing. Now, I think that this term is actually misleading and it does this a great disservice. When I first read the article headline, I was thoroughly unimpressed enough that I didn’t even bother reading through to the body. In my mind, I was thinking that this is a cute way that we can print our bar charts and pictures of kitties that it would be an advance that has some benefit, but really didn’t have any meat and potatoes to speak off.

However, the next day, I saw another article and I was curious enough to read through the article and what I read just amazed me. This technology is more about creating solid 3 dimensional objects out a digital specification of an object. Before I continued to read through, I thought that this was interesting, but not yet beneficial as I imagined that the “printer” was essentially creating a play-doh’ish kind of object that looks like the original.

Once again, I was wrong. There are many videos of this technology on YouTube. The one video that I saw was that they took a normal metal wrench and had it scanned in 3 dimensions. They then “printed” this wrench and then they demonstrated that the item was functional – they took this wrench and they tightened a bolt using it.

The latest “wow” factor is another article that I read recently was that in the UK, they used this technology to design and build components for a small kit-sized airplane. When all of the parts where completed, they were snapped together without using any tools, and the plane can not only fly but it can fly up to speeds of 100mph. For those interested, the link for the article is http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2023469/Aeroplane-created-using-3D-printer-world-Scientists-create-aircraft-100mph-max-speed.html. 

This is mind-boggling technology. I’m sure that it is very expensive and time-consuming, but in its infancy, most technology is.

The ability to prototype products will be phenomenal. This will allow designers and production staff to be able make quick changes and tweaks to the design of their products.

This technology will not just be rainbows and butterflies though; there will be numerous legal issues. For example, in the case of the wrench – if I purchase the wrench, I don’t have the right to be able to make a copy of it. The company that created the wrench spent numerous hours and dollars in product development and as such, this will be a real concern.

Where this would be an incredible technology is in the health-care sector. Can you imagine being able to go to the dentist’s in the future and if you need a partial denture, they can scan your teeth and produce an EXACT replica of each tooth? I’m sure that having the denture being exactly the same will make this so much easier. What about if someone needed to have their leg amputated? At least an exact replica of the existing let could be made and it should be so much easier to adapt.

We’re well on our way to the age of Star Trek and I anxiously wait for my replicator!