Your Changing Technology – Avoiding Techno Clutter

By Doyne Phillips, Managing Editor for Southern Writers Magazine

“Today is the slowest rate of technological change you will ever experience in your lifetime.” Shelly Palmer Report, 2016

If you are like most of us you love technology or even better if you are like most of us you love change? But who doesn’t love changing technology?  For some of us the above statement from the 2016 Shelly Palmer Report literally strikes fear in our hearts. Technology has proven to be good and bad. See my Suite T Blog from November of 2013 concerning Technology Gone Wrong.  

Bad technology can occur but is usually corrected without experiencing the fanfare the error received. 

Also in a March 2017 blog I shared an account of Technology Crying Wolf . It is accounts like these that give the faint of heart an excuse not to embrace new technology. The truth is technology works more times than not.

The positive side of technology for writers is the endless resources we have at our finger tips. One devise affords us the luxury of a research library, type and print, distribution, marketing and sales. This device and its programs are being updated constantly. The big concern is the change involved. Most of us love change as much as we do technology but we must embrace it.

I recently have been involved with a major programming change with a company’s email system. The system is much faster, powerful and has more business applications. It is being well received by the employees and I believe one of the major reasons it is being received well is due to the similar look of the program. Management had an option to make the change to the new system without a major change to the look and operation of it. It is like getting a new engine in your old car. It runs better but looks and operates the same. This makes for a favorable transition.

If you are like most of us you have a younger generation in your midst that has all types of recommendations of new technology you need. I do and honestly I have adopted some of these out of self-defense so I can communicate with these youngsters. But now when they come to me with such suggestions I put them to the test with 3 questions: What does this do? What are its benefits to me? 

How will I use it in my work life or personal life? If all three can’t be answered to my satisfaction I doubt it would be of benefit to me at this time.  Just because it is the latest thing doesn’t mean you need it. Odds are by the time you may want to try it out the 3^rd generation will be available. So why settle for Newthing 1.0 when Newthing 3.0 will be out in a few months.

Take your time and question it. This allows you to have an open door policy should that need arise and it will also allow you to avoid the techno clutter in your life.

 

      

Technology Crying Wolf

By Doyne Phillips, Managing Editor for Southern Writers Magazine

The laser light show of the Great Pyramids is instructive and beautiful. It allows a glorious presentation of one of the world’s great wonders. It is a marriage of modern technology and ancient wonder. But some years ago this great marvel set off one of the greatest technology mismatches in modern history.

After 9/11 our military started positioning itself for a possible conflict in the Middle East. The Vietnam era C141 cargo planes began the long haul from the States to the various military bases    in the Middle East with supplies and equipment.

These great mammoths were equipped with the latest technology for defense which included a flare defense against heat seeking missiles. These flares would be fired off to draw the heat seeking missiles away from the aircraft and explode harmless in midair out of the range of the aircraft.

As these great aircrafts made their way over the area of the Great Pyramids their flares began firing. It took some research to discover the false triggering of the flares but it was soon discovered the lasers in the Pyramids light show was setting off the flares. The lasers were simulating the lasers of the guidance system of a heat seeking missile thus the flares fired to defend the aircraft from the incoming missiles, in effect crying wolf. The solution was switching the defense system to manual while in the area of the Pyramids.

Today’s technology, for the most part, does what it is intended to do. But there are cases when it goes awry. One case was the recent phantom phone calls to 911. They were generated by a problem in the lines and were signaling a 911 call as a hang up coming from a particular home. The calls were not made by the people or their children. The children were grown and not living with them and the couple were in fact not even home when some of the calls were made. The police had made several trips to the home but the owners felt sure that was about to end. A glitch in the system was crying wolf. The authorities were not about to make a false run when someone may need their help elsewhere.          

Technology crying wolf has become more common than we think. Most of it sounds like fiction but it is highly possible if it is true. Either way writers can use these believable or not events to begin a great story. I say believable because you may want to verify the two stories I used as examples. See if you can confirm either or both and let me know what you find. Was this true or was I crying wolf.