Every year, Jim denOtter, CTO at Computronix, delivers what we have all come to know as Jim’s Tech Rant. It’s an insightful look into advancements in technology and how it affects our daily lives. This year’s Tech Rant was titled “Technology has Consequences” and we thought we’d share it with you.
In Part Two of “Jim’s Tech Rant”, he continues to demonstrate how technological advancements have fundamentally changed things, especially communication…
“Family arguments over text. Do you know how narrow the (communication) band-width is over text? For instance, my wife texts, ‘would you like to go to dinner at so and so’s house tonight?’ I text back, ‘Sure’. Well, now we aren’t going because I said ‘sure’ and clearly ‘sure’ means ‘no’. I thought ‘sure’ meant ‘sure’. (Jim and the audience laugh quite a bit because we have all experienced this one way or another.) Texting is a really narrow bandwidth and instantaneous and it’s not always the best.
So, what are the benefits of these technical advancements? This kind of (instantaneous and ubiquitous) communication democratizes everything. What do I mean? Well, now you don’t need years and years of position or a massive corporation behind you with all sorts of authority, you can be a big star if you simply get noticed (on YouTube). You can participate in crowd source work, people try KickStarter and suddenly the things that nobody would take a flyer on a few years ago are being noticed. You can do stuff you simply couldn’t do before. You can buy commodities you couldn’t previously buy…”
In Part Three, Jim proposes the idea that electricity could be traded between neighbors and how blockchain technology will be essential in the near future.
