I've always been fascinated by technology since I was very young. Initially I gazed upon it was awe and wonder but that was quickly replaced with curiosity and how I could harness it to change my life and hopefully the world. I naively first equated technology to computers. Granted, computers are technology but it goes so much deeper than that.
Nearly every device we have in our daily lives has some form of technology inside. These days, if you are not at the very least cognizant of technology components you quickly become dependent upon others to help you in your everyday life. Always striving to be self-sufficient I am always looking at technology to better understand how it works but more importantly why it exists in its current form and how it can be configured or expanded to better meet my needs.
While my initial interest in technology was around computers, it has evolved over time. With each new iteration of processing, that interest has grown. I would love to say I was able to maintain my level of technology understanding, I would be lying. Sophistication and complexity grow with each new device that comes to market. It used to be that I could just go out and get something new and it would do one thing that if I implemented it right would make my life easier or open capabilities previously not available.
Those days are gone as most consumers are now looking for pieces. Few of these pieces come from the same manufacturer and in some cases iterations of the same product have evolved and act different from its predecessor even from the same company. This is what makes technology so challenging but also so enjoyable.
It's not just about understanding individual pieces of technology. You must understand how this new piece interacts with every other piece that is now somehow tied to our lives. In many cases it is more difficult to introduce new technology into an existing environment due to what it might change or break because of differences in how each piece manages its own piece in the overall puzzle.
The key these days is to develop an understanding of orchestration. Much like a music conductor, I spend a lot of my time looking at technology arrangements understanding what instruments are needed in which places so that everything works in tune. And like a musical composition, if you choose the wrong instrument or it hits an unexpected note, things sour really quickly and you wince wondering whether you will even be able to complete the performance without being booed off the stage.
The thing about technology is that it always comes with the promise that things will be better and easier if the technology is used. For those of us who are dealing with new things on a daily basis, we buy into that promise and do what we can to bring it to fruition. As my family likes to remind me, sometimes when you are so close to the new technology you forget that not everyone has the same level of knowledge of what these new pieces do and while I may think I am making things easier, instead I tend to break the user experience and make things more complicated. A worse problem is I make it so that only I know how to make things work meaning I become a single point of failure in my quest for making things "smarter".
 |
 |
 |
| Computers | Apple Devices | Smart Home |
This section attempts to define and explain the technology that exists within my life and how I am trying to help it to evolve to identify new use cases that can help me personally but also how I can help to make it more usable for those around me. The goal is to provide a central repository of information so that I can bring order to the chaos of interconnectivity and the pitfalls I have encountered to potentially make better decisions on where technology makes the most sense to deploy.
Back
