Technology is my friend

Over two decades ago I lugged around a portable fax machine so I could keep up on my work when I was travelling. With the advent of email and internet I can`t remember that last time I used a fax machine. Puzzlingly, we still put those fax numbers on our business cards.

When cleaning my basement recently I discovered a host of technology that today seems like relics. Some may remember when we put pen to paper to connect with family and friends. I have kept boxes of letters for sentimental reasons. Hmm, I should scan them and preserve them for eternity.

There was a Walkman with a case of really neat 70 and 80`s music, my recordable 8 track player, my ‘brick’ cellphone and a reel to reel tape recorder with tapes that contain my grandmother’s voice. My grandmother lived 100 years (1880 – 1980) and witnessed the genesis of most of the technology we use today. She saw the advent of the telegraph, the radio, motion pictures, walkie-talkies, television, and rudimentary computers.

Today even the innovations of my youth have been replaced. In 1999 I moved to my current home my single lens reflex camera, slide projector, VHS player and tapes, my tuner, amp, CD and cassette player have stayed in their boxes. The piece de resistance is a 16mm film projector. A staple in my high school classes. I reminisce.

Nowadays I`ve got GPS to track me when I go for a run and my iPhone is an instant entertainment centre for music and videos. I can take a photo anytime anywhere and instantly post it around the world. Technology is my friend.

Few of us could imagine living or working without the Internet and the devices that provide its access. I’ve always embraced technology and remain enthusiastic about how it will continue to positively affect our lives. Why wouldn’t you love it when in the palm of your hand you have technology that keeps you in touch with anyone immediately and virtually from anywhere. Even those in space.

There is no end to the way technology has, and is changing our lives, and its pace is rapid. Stats Canada tells us more than 20% of Canadians rely simply on smartphones as a way to stay in touch. An amazing 79 % of Canadians have smartphones creating a mobile society using technology that manages our health, our finances and our social behaviours.

It is time that the technology departments move to the front of our organizations. They must stop being a service that supports business lines to one that leads enterprises built on linked digitization. This would be a natural evolution as we now have a working generation of millennials that grew up in a tech savvy world. For most of their lives, they have mainly known an online world that feeds their social, economic and environmental perspectives. They entertain and educate themselves with a device a fraction of the size of Alexander Bell's telephone. As we move forward, our youth will develop a new hybrid of skills that allow them to understand and use technology as an essential element of life itself.

As young people enter the workforce, they are equipped to capitalize on the technological awareness they possess. Given the changes I`ve experienced in my lifetime the next generation will welcome, and more importantly they will influence, the way technological is used for work and play. They enter a realm where productivity and success is already determined by the ability to communicate effectively through technology. It’s an age of, wearable technology that can amplify human abilities, 3D printing, robots that act like people, cars that drive themselves and machines that can think and make decisions. Every action through our connected intelligent technology is consistently and incipiently collecting zettabytes, yottabytes and eventually domegemegrottebytes of minable data as fodder for future generations and fantastical technology

Yet, my grandmother’s voice is captured on a small length of cellophane. She was one of first friends of technology.

#technology