Technology and me



I have a love/hate relationship with technology. Perhaps you can relate. (Now I'm about to date myself and bore most of you) ... ever since I typed out FORTRAN and COBOL programs onto punched cards to run on the IBM 1130 computer at Geneva College, and then dropped the whole stack and had to sort them ... ever since I spent many hours (cumulatively) toggling switches to write a bootstrap program (in Octal) into a DEC PDP8 so that it could read the operating system in via paper tape, then had the paper tape tear ... ever since I have spent night after night on third shift at IBM trying to find out the conditions that caused the hardware to fail ... or trying to track down bugs in software that other people wrote very badly ... or trying to track down bugs in my own code which was also written very poorly ... or waiting for Windows to update while I have something really important to do (are you with me now?) ... or trying to type a text on my wife's "smartphone" (I still use a "flip-phone" designed for senior citizens) ... and having it (the smartphone) be oh so helpful as it constantly gives really stupid suggestions about what I really mean to say ... I have learned to hate technology ... and now you have learned to hate run-on sentences!

But working with technology can also be immensely satisfying. Finding that elusive hardware bug which could have cost IBM lots of money, time, and embarrassment made the long hours well spent. Writing software in the year  2000 that lasted until 2018 with no bugs, until it finally stopped working when Windows 10 made the platform obsolete, made me feel good about myself. Renewing old relationships on Facebook, some going back to my High School years, and living vicariously through their joys and sorrows, has drawn us closer even though we haven't seen each other in decades. Even this blog and the people it will reach would not be possible without the internet.

But Facebook can be used for nefarious purposes that violate people's privacy and spread dissent and false-hood. Which brings me back to my love/hate relationship with technology. There is much good, but also much bad with the internet and how we humans have chosen to use this two-edged sword. I hope this blog will be a responsible use of this wonderful tool and that we will come together to communicate in truth as well as civility with the goal of fostering a greater understanding.

But the technology page will not be exclusively about computer technology. I am also very interested in green energy technology, advances in travel technology, space technology, the technology that utilizes plastic waste, the technology that provides clean water to developing nations, medical technology, and so forth. Much of what I will post will be links to what various people are doing so that we can discuss it in the comments. I invite people to point me in the direction of other links so that I can incorporate them into future posts. So let's go on the adventure in education together.

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