It's Dai Time

Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Tag: technology

Day 348: future tech

January 26, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I wish I could do more things over the Internet.

And it’s not because I dislike people.  I enjoy the company of humans and I’ve been known to even initiate gatherings of humans so that a medium-sized group may form in a single location and we may rejoice over a common interest or goal, like football or cheating at a high-stake baccarat game.

But people make mistakes and people have feelings and other things to do.  Interactions over the Internet are different, especially if there’s nothing but bits on the other end of the conversation.

I renewed my car registration over the Internet a few days ago, painlessly.  I was able to enter in a code specific to my car, view the bill for car registration this upcoming year, and pay with a credit card in a matter of minutes.  The system was able to serve me specifically, without time pressure, and I was able to finish the whole thing without ever having to wait in line or dig my license out of my wallet.

I enjoy ordering food over the Internet because it means that the restaurant gets an exact printout of my order and there’s less room for human error.  It also means that I don’t have to wait on the phone while other orders are taken, repeat myself over a bad connection, give my address every time, or remember to ask if I can pay with a credit card before I hang up.

The Internet codifies routine interactions that many people do so well.  I can do them efficiently and at my own pace, without needing to disturb anybody else.

The imagined future of a few decades ago was wrong.  Computers aren’t here to become intelligent and kill us and the nobody has a personal robot that looks like a person.  No, machines are used to make sure that when we order our custom pizza with a different sauce and two different toppings on each half, we get what we ordered.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Day 315: santa

December 24, 2009 / / 0 Comments

In less than an hour, Santa is going to take off from the North Pole and begin his yearly trek across the globe. I forget that he has to visit places around the world with our wonky time zones, meaning he’ll actually start when it’s barely even the 24th here in California.

And in our current age of technology and instant information, you can track where he’ll be and when with the help of NORAD and Google Maps/Earth. This year, you can even get Twitter updates!

Santa’s got a funny reputation. At some point, the publicists for the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny give up. At a certain age, kids don’t really believe that they exist, and there’s nobody out there really trying to convince them otherwise. But Santa? Even as an adult, there are movies pushing for a the jolly man. The postal service still keeps him on the route. He’s still got people keeping his name alive.

And for that? I have to give the man some props.

Day 266: google wave

November 4, 2009 / / 0 Comments

About a week ago, I got an invite to try out Google Wave.  Since then, I’ve messed around with it a bit.

It purports to be a replacement for email (among other things), but the one thing that really hinders the service from being anything other than a novelty at this point is the same thing that would bring it crashing down: ubiquity.

Google Wave invites aren’t easy to come by and the average person on the street, who might be well aware of Gmail, has probably not yet heard of Google Wave.  So, the hodgepodge of friends I have that are using the service aren’t using it regularly; why check an “email” account on a service used by less than 10% of your contacts and where you never get messages?

Sure, I can see its potential, but it’ll be hard to get a real bearing on the usefulness and practicality of Wave until a large amount of people I know are using on a daily basis.

For now, it’s just a technology without an active userbase, which makes it interesting and fun, but not terribly useful.

Day 236: offline

October 5, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Katie’s cell phone has been acting up recently, and we’re not sure whether it’s the battery or the phone itself.  We may end up getting her a new phone (or “upgrade” or whatever AT&T wants to call it), or may try getting a new battery.  Either way, it won’t cost much.

The real price is in this gray zone, when she has a phone that only functions some of the time.  Even though I’m not the one who has the broken phone, it’s sobering to be thrown back a decade into a time when cell phones weren’t the everyday device they are now.

It’s a little scary, not knowing whether I can actually call her during the work day if something comes up, or knowing that she probably couldn’t call me (or AAA) if she were driving and the car broke down.

We’re spoiled nowadays.  With my iPhone, I get instantaneous access, nearly anywhere in the country, to all the information I would ever need.  I can pinpoint my exact location, find a nearby fill-in-the-blank, and read reviews on it from the palm of my hand.  I can check my bank accounts, buy stocks, look up an old friend’s contact information on Facebook.  It’s really a bit unbelievable if I think back on my cell phone-less childhood.

Maybe we haven’t been spoiled.  More, technologically bettered.  It’s not that our parents didn’t have this technology because they were poor or choose not to adapt it; this convenience simply didn’t exist back then.

Still, it’s a bit much, especially considering I’ve only been alive 26 years.  And to see how one malfunctioning cell phone can throw us off.

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