TECH TALK

“There are people that say the internet is as important to humanity as the invention of writing.”

How big of a role does technology play in our lives? About a big a role as Michael Jordan was for the Bulls. If you ask any high school or college student, what is one thing they could not live without, I bet over 90% would say their cell phone, computer, or television. It is impossible to go through a day without using some kind of technology. Trying to imagine a world without the plethora of electronic devices we have today is very difficult. It is amazing the influence the media has on us in regards to new innovations. Looking at the Ipad, many people were confused at why we would need this kind of gadget. Now, every company is making their own form of this tablet. People love to follow trends and consumers are addicted to keeping up 

with “everyone else.”

Technology is value neutral. You’ll have those people who will say it’s amazing, and others say it’s our greatest downfall. The value that is attached to any given piece of technology depends on who is using it, evaluating it, and what they do with it. It can do good things or cause harm, depending on what point of view you take. For example, a mother may think her son spends too much time on a screen, but the son could think it’s the coolest thing ever. An inventor brings something into the world and it starts off as something basic. Other inventors than come in, survey the idea, and figure out how to make it even better. With the number of innovations being made today, it seems like technology changes faster than the weather.

Technology can be split in two forms; replacement and enhanced. Enhanced technology is something that builds on an existing invention. It’s when you make something bigger, better, faster or stronger. Comparing smart phones and laptops to what they were when they first came out, it is eye opening how far we’ve come in such a short period of time.  Replacement technology is when one technology completely overtakes another. LPs were replaced by CDs and CDs were replaced by mp3s. The typewriter was kicked out by the computer. Newspapers are slowly fading out as everything goes online. Ideas are constantly being upgraded and this is a process that never stops.

The effects of technology are hard to predict. In many cases, inventors don’t know the ceiling of their innovation. Or they could design something for one purpose, and it could hit an audience they hadn’t considered. When the telephone first came out, the majority of people thought it was just a novelty item and that it wouldn’t catch on. An editor said “the art of the conversation consists of having a listener. It seems absurd to be addressing a piece of iron” (Scientific American). Narrow mindedness in the technology fields is never a good attitude to have.

The development of technology is comparable to a space shuttle launching. When a shuttle is first launched, it seems like it’s hardly moving because its gathering thrust; then it picks up more speed as it gathers momentum, and eventually it just takes off. Once something is invented, it gathers momentum through a variety of innovations to the original idea, and then takes off to places we’ve never seen.  One of the most popular American invention phrases is “what will they think of next?” With technology improvement happening at such a rapid pace, it is difficult to imagine what the next game changer will be.

The person I conducted my interview with is Ryan Heidorn. He is the technology systems manager at Endicott College. He’s responsible for the technology systems that power the classroom computers, laptops, printer, anything on the techy side. He maintains servers and handles all the software licensing. He’s been at Endicott a little over four years. He started out as just a tech assistant, eventually getting promoted to the position he has today. Ryan received his masters in IT here at Endicott, so it was a pretty easy transition for him. In this interview, I got his take on the role technology has played in his life and where he sees it heading in the future.

Q. To start off, what was technology like when you were a kid? Do you remember anything where you were really excited when you came out?

A. Well I was born in 1984 so I kind of remember a time before computers but not really. I remember getting into computers. I kind of date it around Windows 3.1, where you had the floppy discs and you could put games on it. I was immediately drawn to that sort of thing.

Q. So what were some of the big names growing up? Was there any one company, or form of technology or entertainment that you said wow this is really cool?

A. Yeah totally. I remember the personal computer really exploding in like the mid 90s and Gateway was a big company in that market. The CD-ROM came out and that was huge just cause you could fit so much information on it and that suddenly changed a lot of things, software applications were becoming much much bigger. Eventually, as that growth continued to rise, you’d get like, if your going to buy a game or something like that, you’d get a package that maybe had like six CD’s on it, you’d install everything from that. The personal computer was about two grand for a mid-range system, so prices have really come down while the power and processing has increased.

Q. You mentioned CD’s, do you remember the transition from everything being on CDs to everything going to mp3s and digital?

A. Yeah definitely. I’m a big music buff too so I remember the Napster days and I was on a site called audio galaxy I think it was, the mp3 totally made the question of copyright and intellectual property. That really started to become a gray area around the time mp3 coding was created. That’s something I haven’t really fully resolved for myself, as far as the ethics around that and everything.

Q. How’d you become interested in working with technology? Did you have any major influences or anyone that kind of showed you the way?

A. Yeah my Grandfather actually worked for IBM, in the time before the personal computer, but as he was retiring, I remember he had some really cool computers like the all in one boxy robot looking things that nowadays we would look at look it’s an antique. But that was the latest and greatest computer. I remember they were the first people I knew that had a full internet connection. I’d say I was interested when I first saw that you could play games on a computer, ya know as a kid, pretty typical. But then my interest really took off when I discovered the internet and the power of connection. So that’s how it opened up. I remember logging on to AOL back in day and going into the kid’s chat room and that sort of thing.

Q. So how would you say the internet and technology has changed in terms of global communication and cyber culture?

A. Yeah I read a lot of technology and philosophical type people that say the internet is as important to humanity as the invention of writing. That’s such a grand claim that it’s hard to know, I’m immediately skeptical about that, but then when I think about the ways in which it’s really shrunk the world. It doesn’t matter for a lot of things these days in business communications where on the planet you’re physically located because communication can be in real time no matter where you are. Most international businesses these days complete tasks in a digital fashion and so location isn’t as important. And really just connected all these small groups of people that can suddenly come together. Early on in the web, it was bulletin boards and now we got all these social media sites. It’s really a transformative kind of thing, especially now that we carry the web with us on smart phones. We’re always plugged in to this form of connectedness. Since everyone has it, you gotta have it too and this has made us become self-reliant on all this stuff that’s at our fingertips. I guess time will tell, if it’s as important as the invention of writing but it’s definitely a significant step.

Q. What would you say are some of the biggest problems that our coming up with today’s revolution of technology?

A. For me, its privacy. I guess I’m sort of a skeptical, paranoid person anyways but like if you look at a product like Google Glass, it’s this new thing that can see wherever you go online. And even if you take a step back and look at the smart phone, I mean here’s a device that you carry with you, that’s capable at all times of knowing where you are, who you’re talking with, content your accessing, stuff like that. This really puts a lot of power in the hands of telecommunication companies, software developers and I mean even the government. Just recently there was an ex FBI agent who went on the record saying that the government records and archives all voice communications. And you can see similar stuff like the NSA captures all the internet traffic in real time so in a way that’s never before been possible, these awesome technologies also enable a negative side like constant surveillance. There’s really no way to live in a society now and not have the potential of being tracked at all times.

Q. You mentioned cell phones that can track, where would you say cell phones, computers, mp3 device technology is headed. I know we haven’t reached the peak of technological advances, but it’s hard to imagine us getting more advanced than what we already have.

A. Totally. I’ve read some people that say the best indicator of where science is going is to read science fiction. Like if you read science fiction back to the twenties and forties, they kind of predict a world in which we’re living now, in some ways. Like the ease of connecting to anyone across the planet. That technology is definitely here. So if you extrapolate that and draw a line out, I mean I don’t know where we’re headed like some people will say eventually we’ll start putting devices within ourselves and becoming part human and part machine. I think if you look at technology through the different disciplines, like nanotechnology, bio technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, all those things converge to say if technology allows humans to become superhuman in a way, I think we would take that leap. And we’ll start to enhance ourselves or genetically select for superior qualities or maybe some kind of mechanical implant in the body. It’s crazy stuff I know, but its technologically feasible. I think the question as a culture or ethically, are we going to go there, I don’t know. I feel like we’re not ready for that but it might happen none the less.

Q. Would you say that’s one hundred years away, five hundred years away, 50 years away?

A. I think within your and my lifetime we’ll start to see some of these things but I think it will be at least a hundred years before that sort of thing is stretched out but like I said I think we’ll see tangible steps of things headed that way.

Q. Who would you say is the technologically most advanced country right now and has that changed over time?

A. I don’t really know. My sense is that kind of all western civilizations have progressed at a similar rate like as far as the adaption of the internet and the adaption of smart phones. We also think that countries like Japan and some of the Scandinavian countries as being really technologically advanced but I know here even in America, a lot of business operations as far as warehousing and supply chain stuff. All that stuff is so automated with robots that are fulfilling orders placed online and that sort of thing which is pretty cool. Speed and efficiency in America have really… For a while we kind of left our manufacturing dominance in the world and I kinda see that coming back through the use of technology. In terms of communication I get the sense that America is maybe a little bit behind. I know other countries like South Korea have far superior infrastructure for communication. Like the fiber networks they have are a hundred times faster than what common here. I think you could draw similar parallels with cell phone technologies in other countries but I don’t really know.

Q. A lot of people say it’s the golden age of inventing because of all the technology we have nowadays, would you agree with this or do you think there’s no real way of telling?

A. In terms of like? Having the most opportunity?

Q. Yes.

A. I would say there is definitely truth to that. The first thing that came to mind is the issue of net neutrality. The internet is sort of anarchic right now in the sense of like if you have an internet connection you get the same access as anyone else who has an internet connection. I think that level playing field is huge. I used to be in a band and we would be able to find gigs and plan a tour and reach an audience in ways that bands thirty years ago, really had no access to. Things can go viral and you can reach an intense number of people in a very easy and cheap, free way almost. I think that makes the environment right for innovation. But going back to net neutrality too, there’s kind of a movement with cable companies and congress to almost establish a new internet and basically, so we have this existing cable infrastructure and its slow compared to other countries but there’s kind of a movement among corporations too, as they build out infrastructure for faster internet access for new kinds of services that we don’t have right now. These companies would act as gatekeepers, where you’d have to pay them for your services. If something like that were to happen, it would stifle creativity in the sense that not everyone could have the same access to innovate. But I think there is truth to say there’s some golden age, primarily for the ability to reach a large number of people easily.

Q. Just one more thing to wrap it up. Do you have any advice or tips for someone just getting started out in the IT world or how they would get their feet wet?

A. In terms of getting into the business right now, one thing the internet has enabled is a lot of outsourcing. So for instance, if you wanted to be a developer if you wanted to write code or something like that, you have to be like really freaking good to get a job that’s worth anything because when a company can just as easily pay their outsource needs to a company over in India and they work at five dollars an hour or something like that. They would really have no incentive to hire you. So I think if you’re looking to get into technology there are a number of fields that are booming right now. One of them is healthcare. Another thing I’d say is that any time you can add a human element to technology, that you’re not a “code monkey,” but you’re a human person that might be like in the management of IT or something that requires a human being on site to do something. Those are the type of jobs you want to look out for. Another thing I’d say, just in general, something I like to tell people with all new technologies coming out so rapidly, you have so much choice with new services, we’re kind of pressured to make choices when we don’t understand the implications. So I usually advise people, whenever possible be a late adapter to technology, not to resist technology but to rather than go all out and jump into something, sit back, look at it, other people will dive in. I think that’s good advice for an environment where things change so quickly.

(Ryan doesn't like his actual picture floating around on the web, so he uses this self portrait painting and allowed me to use it)