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 Gone Wrong

By Doyne Phillips, Managing Editor for Southern Writers Magazine 

Those millions of citizens that attempted signing up for The Affordable Care Act Health Insurance, aka Obamacare, were met with technology gone wrong. This brings to mind Robert Burns poem To a Mouse which states “the best laid schemes of mice and men go often awry and leave us nothing but grief and pain for promised joy”. It is amazing that a government contractor and $500 million, a conservative figure by some, couldn’t do what two college kids in their parent’s garage could probably do on a shoestring budget.   

The city of Memphis, Tennessee, after a year of debate by the city council, recently spent several million dollars replacing their downtown parking meters. Those old metal meters, with the coin slots and hand crank on the front, were replaced with a high tech solar powered model. The meters brought to the city high technology and solar power, techie and green. It is a beautiful piece of technology and something its citizens can be proud of. But there is one problem. When it is cloudy or if the meter happens to be in an area that remains in the shadow of a building it doesn’t work. No solar no power.   

As you drive through the downtown area on a cloudy day you will see cars and meters with notes on them explaining the meter isn’t in working order. They are concerned about a ticket but few people know the one and only meter maid the city had retired recently.  

I do not mean this to be a political rant about government spending but do want to use these examples of technology gone wrong to remind us that it can. It can go wrong due to failed programs as with Obamacare or the misplacement of technology as with the solar parking meters. As writers we depend on our technology to put our thoughts on paper so to say. We depend on technology to research, store and share our work. We feel secure in it and feel we can depend on it but we must be aware it can go wrong. 

The loss of your life’s work would be a tragedy. Take precautions to secure your work. Use a good antivirus program and online backup. I use a local computer service for the antivirus program. They can renew it annually at a much lower cost than the online price. I also use an offsite backup service which will once a week download and backup all my information. Should I ever need to retrieve my information it is available for me.   

In the world of technology gone wrong these things are not a cure all but it will help you sleep at night. Take precautions, leave technology to others and continue to write with confidence.