The day the blog stood still

Keeping Up on the Trend of Computer Technology

2009-08-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sat down at a computer to work on a project or assignment yet had no idea how to operate the programs needed? There are many people in the world today that feel left behind by technology. Many things can be done to help you avoid being in this position. All you have to do is take initiative and learn about your technology. This technology will help you in all ways of life starting with finding a job. You will then be able to do this job well and with great efficiency. To do this you need to be willing to learn. Technology can help people from all walks of life. The most important thing that you can do to stay knowledgeable and valuable in the job market is keep up with the technology that you need to use.

Every day you are affected by technology, from your alarm clock to your cell phone. In the article titled Keeping up with Technology, Brian J. Nichelson says, “regardless of the technology in question, we all need a better handle on the fundamentals, like electricity, magnetism, light, sound, fluid behavior, and other fundamentals as you need them” (Nichelson). This is something that is good for everyone. Most people have no clue how some of the things that we use in society work. A better understanding of basic principles allows you to further understand the things that you work with everyday. With this basic understanding you will comprehend the basics of how a water fountain works, or the idea behind the combustion engine in your car. Knowing these fundamentals are the gateway to be able to understand more complex things that you use in your everyday life. The main thing that has to come from this is you have to be willing to be a life learner; this means that when you don’t understand something, you go and you learn how it works. This will allow you to be safer and know what needs to be done to safely use everything that you work with. This means that you will understand you car and how it runs so that you can maintains its integrity and keep it running safely.

Nichelson proposes a four-step process that will help you to keep up with technology: First, determine your needs. Second, assess the resources available to you. Third, rank the resources in order of usefulness to you, and lastly, make or allow the time to use the resources. With these steps applied to your everyday life, you should be able to keep yourself where you need to be in terms of technology. These steps should only take a few minutes a week if you do it consistently. Nichelson sums it up best when saying “technology is an unavoidable and critical element of life today” (Nichelson). This will greatly help you in every aspect of your life, from work to your home life.

“Technology is essential to every business, even those that aren’t considered “technology” companies” (Nichelson). At many jobs you have to come in and check your email on your computer, type a word document, or prepare that big excel sheet for your report. All of these things are affected by technology and how it is changing. Not keeping up with the latest thing is a problem not only for you but for your co-workers as well. Cory Lewis, manager of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine (OUCOM) Technology Shop, says:

Usually people that don’t keep up with the advancing of technology in the workplace make it hard and put more work on other people, basically because they refuse to learn new things. Sometimes I think people think they don’t need to learn new things, but then when the new things become what everyone is using then they have to catch up which makes it harder on themselves for not learning as they went. (Lewis)

Once you are behind, your co-workers, who have already learned the new program of feature, now have to teach you how to use it or wait for you to figure out how this works. This is something that will cause lots of unnecessary stress at your job as well as get many people quite upset. I have seen this myself in many people at work. They make excuses such as, I have been doing this job for years and not changed anything, why should I change now? These people are just finding ways to not have to learn. Something that they think will take precious time away they need, only to find out later that it was a big mistake.

There are many reasons that can put you behind in current technology. The rate at which new things come out is crazy. Scott Lowe, an IT professional of over 15 years, states, “Over the past decade, a number of things have changed that have, I believe, accelerated the pace of change in the field” (Lowe). In his post, Keeping up with Technology Changes he talks about how much technology has changed from the IT point of view over the past decade. When he first started, in 1993, the Internet was not a household thing. Then as it grew computers became more accessible from outside sources. This is what helped launch the whole exponential increase in technology that has occurred of the past years. The increase in communication created through the web the need to be safe, creating a circle of patching, wormhole finding, repairing, and patching again. This alone accounts for a large number of those updates that we see every week. Because of this “it can be a challenge to stay current. Hot button technology changes on a regular basis” (Lowe).You have to actively work to make sure that you are staying up on technology and not letting yourself fall too far behind.

From working in the IT shop at OUCOM I run across many people that are getting to the age where they feel that, since they are retiring soon, they do not need to learn new things. In the time around the release of Microsoft Office 2007, I was going around and upgrading all the machines to the new version of Office. We were an early adopter compared to the rest of the college and many people were skeptic of whether or not it would take off. These people refused to allow me to upgrade, but only a few weeks later I received complaints from these same people because the documents that they were receiving from their co-workers was no longer compatible with the older version of Office. These people had to wait until time could be allocated to upgrade their version of Office, putting them behind in their work. This is just one of many examples of how things of this nature can turn around on you.

Keeping up with computer technology in the work place is helpful for disabled people as well. Technology in the workplace is opening new doors to people who couldn’t work before. Michael Cohn explains this in his article, How does Technology Affect the Workplace Today? that “With the use of technological advancements now widespread in business and industry, more and more formerly “disabled” people are entering the workplace” (Cohn). These new advances in technology are helping many people with disabilities finally feel included in society again. There are many things that help disabled people in the work place. There are computer programs that help people that with limited mobility communicate with the screen. Michael also states “There’s also an expensive little number costing upwards of $10,000 a throw, that translates a line on the computer into a Braille display in front of the keyboard” (Cohn). This may be an expensive item but imagine how much more useful a person who is blind and unable to work will feel with this piece of technology. These advances in technology that are held in the workplace open the door to more people being able to work, as well as feel more useful to society and themselves.

The job market in today’s economy is a very tough one, as a student coming right out of college you need to know how to use all the basic programs to be competitive in the job market. Julie Trade states in her article Using Technology to Land Your Next Job that” the job market hasn’t been this challenging since possibly the Great Depression” (Trade). There are so many people looking for a job today that a normal resume just doesn’t draw the attention that it used to. There are so many people applying for each position. Trade continues to say “With the odds stacked against job seekers, only the most qualified and proactive candidates are attracting the attention of hiring managers” (Trade). This means that you need to create a strong presence where people can find you, and that place is the internet. You need to have a good strong persona on the internet, for most employers insert your name right into the Google search engine and see what comes out as a first step in the hiring process.

College students have the greatest need to stay up with technology if they want to be competitive in the job market. There are many programs out there to help students be able to be competitive in those high price programs even if your wallet is financially challenged. Microsoft started a program in 2008 called Microsoft DreamSpark. This program was designed to help young aspiring people in college to be able to work with these programs and possibly make the next big breakthrough. In their press release Microsoft states, "The program is now available to more than 35 million college students" (Microsoft). This is a very large mass of people and this means that those 35 million college students are able to be up on technology in whatever field that need to be in. As a student at Ohio University I found it very nice to be able to get on DreamSpark and be able to download the latest version of windows server to learn how the basics of servers are handled which has helped me understand how things work for my job at the OUCOM technology shop.

Many people think that today's technology far outreaches that grasp of what man is capable of doing or comprehending. This means that you could sit perfectly fine in your technology chair and never move and still be able to fulfill your job without any issues. This is a way of life that is acceptable in many fields but not all. You could also argue that technology is going too far and we are going to lose control of what we make one day. Many post apocalyptic fills stem from the fact that we lose control over what we create. This may be our future but only if we are not careful with the progress that we make.

Another thing that you must look out for is leaping before you know that there is solid ground. This was a big pitfall be stemmed from Microsoft's latest operating system Windows Vista. Thomas Wailgum talks about issues that came to early adopters of Windows Vista. In his article Four Migration Lessons from Vista Early Adopter he quotes Benjamin Gray who stated, "Although most of these challenges—namely hardware and software compatibility—aren't new with Windows Vista, many of the workarounds companies deployed are." Many of the early adopters were buried in programs that were not compatible with Vista as well as many pieces or hardware that had no support. This is a time when switching early was a mistake and should have been held off until full support was guaranteed. Through all this Vista is still a working operating system with Windows 7, a streamlined newer version of Vista, on the way we will be face yet again with the question of whether or not to advance.

We must all do the work that is needed to stay up with the technology that is ever advancing at a faster and faster rate. You need to remember that you are not only hurting yourself but you are hurting the entire company as well as your fellow co-workers. The next time that you sit down and someone asks you if you want to learn something new, don’t worry about the little bit of time that you are going to lose. Instead think of all the time you will gain in the future when you are the one ahead of the game. Remember that no matter what your job, you need to know the technology that is involved with it so that you can be an efficient worker.

Annotated Bibliography

Lewis, Cory. Personal Interview. 11 August 2009.

Cory Lewis talks about technology and how it affects the work place. The intended use is to talk about how keeping up with current technology in the work place is important and the negative effects of not keeping up.

Lowe, Scott. "Keeping up with IT". TechRepublic. August 11, 2009

Scott Lowe talks about his experience with changing technology in the years the he has been an IT professional. This shows the boom in technology and the exponential rate at which things are increasing. This shows how easy it is to fall behind if you are not careful.

Nichelson Ph.D., Brian J.. "Keeping up with Technology". About.com. August 11, 2009

Brian Nichelson talks about how important it is to keep up with technology. He proposes a 4-step plan that you can apply to your everyday life to keep up in the technology world. This is to be used to show means of how to keep up with technology.

Microsoft Corporation “Microsoft Gives Students Access to Technical Software at No Charge to

Inspire Success and Make a Difference” August 24, 2009.<http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-18GSDPR.mspx>

This press release talks about Microsoft’s program called DreamSpark. This is an example of a way that students are able to keep up with new technology at no personal cost. This will be used to show how students can keep up with some of the latest and greatest development and design tools.

Webmaster Tips. “Student's Guide to Free Software”. August 24, 2009.

This article talks about the different types of software that can be used in an open source way so to have the same ability of software that most people pay for so that you can manage what you are doing without having to break your wallet. This will be used as a way to keep up with technology.

Wailgum, Thomas. “Four Migration Lessons from Early Vista Adopters”

August 25, 2009.

Thomas Wailgum talks about the issues that people encountered when they switched to Window Vista when it was first released. This will be used to show a counter to keeping up with technology as it evolves.

Tade, Julie. “Using Technology to Land Your Next Job.” August 25,

2009.

Technology-to-Land-Your-Next-Job.htm>

Julie Trade talks about how technology today affects the job market and the way that people find jobs. This tells about how an internet persona is important to getting a job. This will be a supporting factor in the argument.

Cohn, Michael. “How Does Technology Affect the Workplace Today?”

September 2000. IEEE-USA 2000 Careers Conference

Michael Cohn talks about how the advances in technology are allowing people that were formerly disabled to be able to work once more. This will be used to support my claim that keeping up on technology is important.

Keeping Up on the Trend of Technology

2009-08-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sat down at a computer to work on a project or assignment yet had no idea what to do? There are many people in the world today that feel left behind by technology. Many things can be done to help you avoid being in this position. All you have to do is take initiative and learn about your technology. To do this you need to be willing to learn. The most important thing that you can do to stay knowledgeable and valuable in the job market is keep up with the technology that you need to use.

Every day you are affected by technology, from your alarm clock to your cell phone. In the article titled Keeping up with Technology, Brian J. Nichelson says, “regardless of the technology in question, we all need a better handle on the fundamentals, like electricity, magnetism, light, sound, fluid behavior, and other fundamentals as you need them” (2). This is something that is good for everyone. A better understanding of basic principles allows you to further understand the things that you work with everyday. Knowing these fundamentals is the gateway to be able to understand more complex things that you use in your everyday life. The main thing that has to come from this is you have to be willing to be a life learner, and not be so arrogant to think that you know everything that you will ever need to know.

Nichelson proposes a four step process that will help you to keep up with technology: First, determine your needs. Second, asses the resources available to you. Third, rank the resources in order of usefulness to you, and lastly, make or allow the time to use the resources. With these steps applied to your everyday life, you should be able to keep yourself where you need to be in terms of technology. This will greatly help you in every aspect of your life, from work to your home life.

“Technology is essential to every business, even those that aren’t considered “technology” companies” (Nichelson). At many jobs you have to come in and check your email on your computer, type a word document, or prepare that big excel sheet for your report. All of these things are affected by technology and how it is changing. Not keeping up with the latest thing is a problem not only for you but for your co-workers as well. Cory Lewis, manager of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine Technology Shop, says:

Usually people that don’t keep up with the advancing of technology in the workplace, make it hard and put more work on other people, basically because they refuse to learn new things. Sometimes I think people think they don’t need to learn new things, but then when the new things become what everyone is using then they have to catch up which makes it harder on themselves for not learning as they went. (Lewis)

Once you are behind, your co-workers, who have already learned the new program of feature, now have to teach you how to use it or wait for you to figure out how this works. This is something that will cause lots of unnecessary stress at your job as well as get many people quite upset. I have seen this myself in many people at work. They make excuses such as, I have been doing this job for years and not changed anything, why should I change now? These people are just finding ways to not have to learn. Something which they think will take precious time away that they need only to find out later that is was a big mistake.

There are many reason that can put you behind in current technology. The rate at which new things come out is crazy. Scott Lowe, an IT professional of over 15 years, states, “Over the past decade, a number of things have changed that have, I believe, accelerated the pace of change in the field.” In his post, Keeping up with Technology Changes. How to do it?, he talks about how much technology has changed from the IT point of view over the past decade. When he first started, in 1993, the Internet was not a household thing. Then as it grew computers became more accessible from outside sources. This is what helped launch the whole exponential increase in technology that has occurred of the past years. The increase in communication created through the web the need to be safe, creating a circle of patching, wormhole finding, repairing, and patching again. This alone accounts for a large number of those updates that we see every week. Because of this “it can be a challenge to stay current. Hot button technology changes on a regular basis” (Lowe). You have to actively work to make sure that you are staying up on technology and not letting yourself fall too far behind.

From working in the IT shop the College of Medicine I run across many people that are getting to the age where they feel that, since they are retiring soon, they do not need to learn new things. In the time around the release of Microsoft Office 2007, I was going around and upgrading all the machines to the new version of Office. We were an early adopter compared to the rest of the college and many people were skeptic of whether or not it would take off. These people refused to allow me to upgrade, but only a few weeks later I received complaints from these same people because the documents that they were receiving from their co-workers was no longer compatible with the older version of Office. These people had to wait until time could be allocated to upgrade their version of Office, putting them behind in their work. This is just one of many examples of how things of this nature can turn around on you.

We must all do the work that is needed to stay up with the technology that is ever advancing at a faster and faster rate. You need to remember that you are not only hurting yourself but you are hurting the entire company as well as your fellow co-workers. The next time that you sit down and someone asks you if you want to learn something new, don’t worry about the little bit of time that you are going to lose. Instead think of all the time you will gain in the future when you are the one ahead of the game. Remember that no matter what your job, you need to know the technology that is involved with it so that you can be an efficient worker.

Works Cited

Lewis, Cory. Personal Interview. 11 August 2009.

Lowe, Scott. "Keeping up with IT". TechRepublic. August 11, 2009
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-manager/?p=485

Nichelson Ph.D., Brian J.. "Keeping up with Technology". About.com. August 11, 2009
http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/beyondstartup/a/keepinguptech.htm

Dr. Strangelove Compositional Modes

2009-08-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

Dr. Strangelove is a movie that has much more depth than you would originally see. From the very first scene the persona of each character is created through the lighting and their outward appearance. Lionel Mandrake is shown as a clean cut Ground Captain that is in a very well lit area in which you can see all of his features. We then cut to General Jack Ripper who is sitting in a dark room with a lit cigar, with a wide angle view to start. This throws in an aura of mystery to Ripper. This beginning scene sets up the Good vs. Evil that ensues throughout the film between General Ripper and Captain Mandrake.

The props used in Dr. Strangelove also give an odd aura to the film the mixture between scenes of actual planes flying and those of the toy planes sitting in front of the screen as landscape scenes run in the background. This gives the image of a plane dashing through the Russian country side yet it can create the image of a high speed attack without being in Russia.

The War Room is another room that has many aspects to it that show the stakes of the world and the type of thing that people were dealing with everyday during the cold war. The table was set to look like a poker table to seem like everyone in the war room was playing a game and holding their best cards close to their vest. Kubrick wanted a setup where " the president, the generals and the Russian ambassador playing a game of poker for the fate of the world” (Stillman 494).

The war room also contained the “Big Map”, this map was essentially a mapped focused around Russia and the United States. The rest of the countries on the map were small and considered insignificant. This showed that everyone else at the time was being overlooked and how much attention and tension was between the US and Russia at this time.

Another thing that really popped out to me was Dr. Strangelove himself. He had the hand of his own which happened to be a Nazi. Kubrick one day suggested that Ed Sikov wear a black glove on one hand only. Once the glove was on Sikov looked down at his hand later he said, “Hey, that’s a storm-trooper’s arm’. So instead of leaving it there looking malignant I gave the arm a life of its own. That arm hated the rest of the body for having made a compromise” (Stillman 494). I find that this really adds comedy to a part of the movie where everyone has decided that it will be the end of the world for the ‘doomsday device’ is about to go off. This is a way that the mood is lightened to not be so down and devastating since the world is about to end.

These are just a few ways of how the compositional modes of film were used. You could watch this film over and over again and still find new exciting details in each new adventure through this story of the end of the world.

Works Cited

Kubrick, Stanley, dir. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

1964. Columbia Pictures, 2009.

Stillman, Grant, “Two of the MaDdest Scientists.” Film History. 20 (2008): 487-500.

1st blog

2009-07-28T06:31:00.001-07:00

First day on the blog, just looking around