I read an editorial in Penthouse magazine (I only bought it for the articles) over 20 years ago written by Frank Herbert (who wrote the Dune Chronicles - one of the best sci-fi reads of all time). He warned about the coming of technology and said that those who didn't learn to control technology would be controlled by it. Boy was he right!
Herbert was pretty savvy to understand the effect that technology would have on society. But I wonder if he would have been surprised to see how much society has been affected by technology. And I wonder if he would have been surprised by the pace of technology change over, particularly, the last, say, five years or so.
It seems that the rate of technology change is exponential. No sooner does a new technology come onto the stage when another seemingly takes its place. In fact, I'm finding it almost overwhelming to try and keep up with it myself.
For example, we no sooner found a replacement for iWeb (Weebly) than I started looking into other web platforms like Wordpress. There are some pretty cool things that Wordpress can do that Weebly cannot and vice versa.
Or take hardware platforms...Apple is now into a pretty consistent pattern of updating their hardware every year albeit at different times of the year depending on the hardware. So questions like, do you upgrade or wait for the next version pop up? Or another big question, do you need to upgrade at all? (Of course us geeks know that you do have to upgrade.)
But what really confounds me is that with all this change there are still an awful lot of folks who have no clue what's happening. Folks who are ignorant of or not very facile with technology. Its pretty clear Herbert knew what he was talking about. I almost wonder if he wasn't just talking about the human species and it's reluctance to embrace anything new. I'll tell you one thing, technology won't control me.
It seems that the rate of technology change is exponential. No sooner does a new technology come onto the stage when another seemingly takes its place. In fact, I'm finding it almost overwhelming to try and keep up with it myself.
For example, we no sooner found a replacement for iWeb (Weebly) than I started looking into other web platforms like Wordpress. There are some pretty cool things that Wordpress can do that Weebly cannot and vice versa.
Or take hardware platforms...Apple is now into a pretty consistent pattern of updating their hardware every year albeit at different times of the year depending on the hardware. So questions like, do you upgrade or wait for the next version pop up? Or another big question, do you need to upgrade at all? (Of course us geeks know that you do have to upgrade.)
But what really confounds me is that with all this change there are still an awful lot of folks who have no clue what's happening. Folks who are ignorant of or not very facile with technology. Its pretty clear Herbert knew what he was talking about. I almost wonder if he wasn't just talking about the human species and it's reluctance to embrace anything new. I'll tell you one thing, technology won't control me.