Fantastic Voyage

As a virtual old-timer in the technological world, I’m very content with the little leaps and bounds that technology has made over the years. To a large extent, technology has evolved through gradual refinement more than anything else. I am of the generation that I can reminisce about an 8086 processor, a 300 baud modem or a dual floppy CGA-based system. Having knowledge and experience with these technologies grants me automatic inclusion into the TGC (Technology Geriatric Club!).

This gradual innovation and maturation is timed and controlled by the science behind the technology. Certainly, the advances in miniaturization has greatly influenced the ability to make smaller, and yet larger capacity – and faster chips.

Same sort of advances with our access to the outside world, we can have the fastestmodem and computer at home, but the true bottleneck is in the infrastructure of our cable or DSL lines.

I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but what I’m seeing lately with technology is astounding me. It seems to me that the physical limitations have been – well, maybe not eliminated, but certainly they are not impeding technological advance.

My first – oh my gosh – moment was with the advent of 3D printing. I’m probably fixating on this technology a bit, but holy cannoli – the more that I read and think about it, the more that I think that this is going to be an incredible technology as more applications are thought of for it.

Caught With My Technological Shorts Down

And here…

3-D Printing

The next innovation that caught my fancy was a monumental shift in technology as it relates to digital photography.

Next Great Technology - Digital Imaging

Next on my hot sheet is a medical technology that I’m not sure if it’s just experimental or becoming close to mainstream. This is the development of what are essentially micro-bots that can be inserted under the skin and either programmed or controlled remotely. I’ll be honest that I haven’t read much of this technology yet, but as someone who has gone through a few surgeries, I can attest that the smaller the incision, the less invasive the surgery, the easier it is on the body. As a side note, as soon as I read this particular article, I flashbacked to my youth and being fascinated with the movie Fantastic Voyage.

Are we there yet? No, not by a long shot and probably not in our children’s, children’s lifetimes but heck, when it comes to technology, I think that just about nothing is impossible but the impossible!

The more that I think about this theory of mine, the more that I think that I might be onto something. Maybe it really is a matter that our technology is maturing – that the first 40 years has been in developing the core infrastructure and technology to remove these hard-wired limitations.

Perhaps now that we have small, fast, efficient processors, (relatively) large storage devices the size of a fingernail and all of the other bits and bytes that we need, maybe now our biggest limitation is the creativity to think outside the box and to say to one’s self, “Well, why NOT?”.

It really is a brave new technological world and I don’t think that it’s going to get any less exciting.

Let’s strap ourselves in and enjoy this fantastic voyage!

The Next Great Technology - Digital Imaging

Some of my "faithful readers" might recall my fascination with 3D printing and how it snuck up on me as a "woah - I would have never thought of that!" sort of thing.

Well, another one of these moments has occurred - this time it is a technological innovation as it relates to photography.  A start-up company down in the US has invented a new technology that is being referred to as a "Plenoptic" camera.  In essence, instead of just taking a very static bits and bytes type of image, it's actually capturing all of the light waves coming from all directions.

What does this really mean?  Well, believe it or not, you can take an "image" which has been captured via a plenoptic camera and with a special widget, you can post this image online and the USER can decide - dynamically - where they want the focal point to be.  To see how way cool this is, the following article actually has a plenoptic image of a flower.  If you go and click on a portion of the image in the background that is currently blurry, you'll see that the effective focal point of the image has been changed.

With innovations like this and 3D printing, I'm always wondering if technology is taking a big LEAP.  For many years now it's been just refining and optimizing existing technology.  Now, it's inventing new technologies that I had never considered.

New innovation in digital imaging.

Engage! A Change in Philosophy

I’m a big fan of Star Trek, especially “Star Trek – The Next Generation”. One of Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s catchphrases was “Engage!” to his crew as they were ready to go into warp drive.

This phrase came to mind to me last week as I waiting to get some blood-work done at a lab.

I was sitting there waiting for my turn with 11 other people and I noticed how many people were on their communication devices. I did a quick count and was amused that half of the people were in fact engaged electronically and seemed to be completely oblivious to the real.

As a matter of fact, that was the original theme of my article, about how technology takes us out of the “here and now” and we are no longer as socially engaged with those around us.

However, as I thought through this, I came to the realization that this was an easy judgment to make. Pondering a little more, I considered that people in fact may still be socially engaged, but that I wasn’t in any position to be able to tell. Maybe the young man was texting with this girlfriend and was completely engaged with her during this exchange. Perhaps the elderly lady was in a chat room with her daughter and they were taking advantage of an opportunity to “spend time” together (in an electronic form).

Despite this revelation in my thought process, I think that there is still cause of concern as it relates to technology and social engagement. In some respects, I think that my original concerns were still valid. For example, should there have been some incident and all of my fellow waitees were called upon to give evidence as to who was there and who wasn’t, I’m quite certain that this electronic engagement would have meant that at least half of the people left the lab not even noticing who they were sitting down with.

In that respect, I think that society has lost a little of its charm.

I can’t help wonder about how many opportunities are being lost because people are oblivious to their fellow flesh-and-blooders. I think of something my Mom told me about how she took a cab recently. She had a nice conversation with the driver and for all intents and purposes adopted him. Had my Mom been absorbed with the electronic life, the two of them would not have had made a dent in each other’s lives.

I think a little ruefully that these types of encounters enrich us. They help us to learn about different views and to grow as we gain new experiences and meet different types of people.

I don’t really so much have a problem with the electronic form of engagement, but the biggest thing for me is that it generally involved engagement with people already in our circle; there can be minimal interaction with others that we might get in the “real world”.

Still, I suppose that it has its benefits. It’s extraordinarily useful for nurturing those relationships that we’ve already developed, so I can’t be too critical. I guess for me, it’s like this type of electronic interaction should be the dessert, not the main course.

In closing – next time you’re on the subway or in a cab and having the opportunity, I will give the following advice…

Engage!

Testing Internet Speed

When we sign-up for high speed Internet, one of the decisions that we’re making is what speed we want.

The problem is that what an Internet Service Provider will quote with their plan is the optimum speed that can be expected. The actual speed can vary – and will vary – depending on numerous factors.

This causes a problem as we don’t always know if there is a chronic problem that is impacting the actual access speed. In my own case, I had suspected that I wasn’t getting the speed that I was expecting, but I just wasn’t so sure and I didn’t really have time to investigate. I then recalled about a website which measures the speed of one’s connection. I ran this utility
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and noticed that I was consistently only getting a download speed of 8 megabits per second, despite paying for 18 megabits per second. The ISP had investigated and determined that there was a physical problem with my line but seeing that I was in the process of moving, I didn’t deem this to be something that I needed to contend with. Interestingly enough, since I moved, I’ve rerun the test and it’s now reporting a more reasonable speed.

Why does this matter to you? Well, first of all, if you’re paying for a specific speed, you’d like to (by and large) get the speed that you’re paying for. The other thing is that if you’re consistently getting much slower speeds, it can be an indication of other more serious problems. It could be an indication of a hardware/line problem, but it could also indicate a problem with your computer as well.

A "Public Service Announcement" from TecHumanity

Just read this article and I thought that this is exactly the sort of thing that people need to be aware of.  As per the attached article on CNET News, there is a DNS related virus which could impede people's ability to access the Internet this summer.  Now - that having been said, do you own due diligence - as you should with ANYTHING that's published on the Internet.  Being an electronic doubting Thomas is not a bad thing.

Still, here's the article.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57418276-83/web-could-vanish-for-hordes-of-people-in-july-fbi-warns/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

In case there's a link problem, then just go to CNET news today and find the article.  Also worth noting that later on, the article gives a website which can take a look at your computer to see if you're infected and affected!  The link is http://www.dcwg.org/ but as always, TecHumanity does not endorse or recommend any website, product or service.  As mentioned before, do your own due diligence!

Cloud Based Storage - Lessons Learned from the MegaUpload Kerfluffle

One of the neat aspects of cloud-based computing is that it gives us an ability to use the cloud as a conduit to backup our files and also to effectively transfer them between each of our electronic devices, or perhaps to be able to access from variable locations.  This is one of those things that is absolutely wonderful and is a real benefit.

Like with anything else in technology though - everything has it's price, and the recent shutdown of MegaUpload illustrates perfectly the problem with cloud-based storage.  One of the big disadvantages with cloud-based storage is that it's very obviously dependent on one's ability to access the website and service.
In this particular example, MegaUpload was a very popular site and was used by many people for storing their files on line - legally and within the TOS (Terms of Service).  The problem was that many people were using this service as a mechanism to distribute materials that were protected by copy write.  Recent legal action by the owners of this material has resulted in the entire site being locked down while this legal soup is navigated though.  In other words if you were an innocent user who was just using this service to keep your in-progress-novel-of-the-year online, well, you were caught up in the huge copy-write infringement net, and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about this.

The lesson here is that whenever using a cloud-based service, a risk analysis needs to be done to determine what happens if you lose access to this service and to put a contingency plan in place.

The Electronic Grim Reaper

Sometimes it might appear that I have a "problem" with cloud computing.  I don't think that's really the case at all.  I think that it's more that when it comes to technology, I tend to look at things with a critical and skeptical eye.   Especially with technology, I think that this is an important thing to do, as one can quickly become dependent on the technology and if you haven't done your due diligence, then problems can occur in the future.  But then again, like some many other cases, maybe I'm over-analyzing!

My latest aha! moment with cloud computing and one of the inherent problems with it came as I was reading the paper this morning.  This article in question was about the author's relatively large iTunes collection and how he had stored it on iCloud (for convenience).  What he then went on to ponder really shocked me as I had never considered the problem.

He started to question what happens when he passes away.  With all of his digital purchases that exist within the cloud - how does he ensure that the access to these files doesn't expire when he does.  He contacted Apple to discuss and the policy is that access to his iCloud account can be granted to his heirs, but in order for this to be done, Apple would need to see a copy of his death certificate in addition to the appropriate section of his will where he bequeaths his libraries.  Holy Cannoli!.  This means that I need list my digital purchases specifically in my will?  The other thing is that going with this process will just give the heir access to the library, it wouldn't allow them to merge in the contents of the willed library with their own personal collection.

So here's the rub...for me, this is not really so much of an issue as I don't (yet) use cloud computing for anything more than as a backup mechanism.  When I die, all of my digital purchases exist on the hard drive of my computer.  Of course, given that I have two teenagers and they do not have an appreciation for my eclectic love of music in all it's forms, I better find someone better to give it to.  If you have a particular genre or artist that you particularly like, leave a shout out and I'll will it to you :)