How Do You Analyze the Potential Long-Term Impact of Technology?

Have you ever watched a science fiction television show like “Star Trek” and wonder how long it will be before we have access to those technologies? The beaming technology to be able to instantly teleport long distances through space would be nice. But before we can even begin to consider this sort of technology we need to first consider how we are going to travel those distances in the first place. For about 50 years we have been using the same basic type of propulsion engine and technology to get us through the Earth’s atmosphere and into orbit, the problem is that this technology has become slow and costly. For us to forge further into the star filled sky we will have to improve on this out dated system and implement something new.

On October 24th 1998 NASA launched Deep Space 1, a mission meant to test a slew of new technologies one of which was ion propulsion (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/details.php?id=5870). The mission was a huge success and was the first time ion propulsion got its chance to shine and show the world what it has to offer. But to understand we need to examine what exactly ion propulsion is; NASA has a website (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs21grc.html) with a great amount of detailed information on ion propulsion. I’m no rocket scientist so I’ll do my best to explain how an ion propulsion system works to the best of my knowledge. The article Tega Jessa wrote for UniversityToday (http://www.universetoday.com/77085/ion-propulsion/) helped me understand it a little bit more by explaining that every engine works on Issac Newtons third law “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Engines burn fuel that then turns into gas and air pushing outwards that gives the thrust needed to propel forward. With that in mind an ion engine basically does the exact same thing only instead of burning the fuel to create thrust they use electricity on ionized fuel to create opposition and thrust, doing this allows the fuel to last much longer and is much more cost effective.

There are no gas stations in space (yet anyways) which means the limits of our technology are the limits of our space exploration. Ion propulsion has proven itself to be a useful and cost effective method of space travel already and is in the final testing stages. In the next decade I believe we will see ion propulsion become the main propulsion system for space travel allowing us to get further faster and more effectively. By the time NASA fully adopts ion propulsion for space travel I believe that commercial travel will begin testing these engines on jets and other aircrafts, this will be a key point in our history because I believe that at this point we will begin to consider commercializing space travel. In my visions of the future I see our commercial airline tickets costing one third of the current cost and travel time being cut down by another third of what it is currently; people will be in the airport with their luggage packed to spend a week on the newest resort on the moon. My entire vision hangs is dependent on the success of a faster and more efficient fuel for space travel.


NASA, Jet Propulsion Labs (12/13/2012) http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/details.php?id=5870

Jessa, Tega, UniversityToday (10/31/2010) http://www.universetoday.com/77085/ion-propulsion/

NASA, Fact Sheet (12/13/2012) http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs21grc.html

What Is the Most Beneficial and the Most Detrimental Advancement in Technology over the Last Decade?

 Technology has changed a lot over the last decade; you could even say that technology has changed us a lot over the last decade. It’s hard to dig in and simply pick the “most” beneficial technological advancement of the last decade; by definition the word technology means “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes” which basically means that we are using our scientific knowledge to improve things around us to our benefit. Anyone who has been reading my blog over the last few months will know how I feel about various advancements in technologies such as wireless telecommunications and smartphone devices or tablets. Our processors are growing smaller and more powerful while new technologies like cloud computing and augmented reality are beginning to gather wind under their sails to help us transition into the next decade of advancements. Simply put we are advancing our technology and at a rather brisk rate. What is more important to me is where we are falling behind in our technology, space exploration. It’s my opinion that we should be focusing on finding more efficient ways to get space missions off the ground and into the sky, this means re-evaluating the technology we are using for shuttle engines and fuels. I feel like by this point we should have already privatized near earth space travel and that money could be funneled back into the space programs to advance our reach further into the universe.

As much as it seems that it has all been a downhill ride there have been some setbacks in technological advancements in the last decade. With more active users on the internet interacting with each other every day through various social sites our information is at the greatest risk yet. Some people have their information stolen and are never the wiser until it is too late, yet others willingly volunteer it without knowing it. There are threats to our information from the many websites we frequent or set up accounts for, some of which are simply because you fall into a targeted group that appeal to hackers. Many companies spend a lot of money to ensure that their users have a safe place to leave their personal information but that doesn’t always stop hacker groups from breaking in and stealing it. As disturbing as the thought of a hacker stealing all of your information from a secure server is, in a lot of cases the reality of who you are entrusting the information to in the first place, is even more disturbing. EULAs (end user licensing agreement) are a new thing by any means, for as long as companies have been providing us with software and services we have been scrolling to the bottom as fast as possible to click accept and move on. The problem is that a lot of these companies are banking on us to not read or know what it is we are agreeing to so that they can make a legally binding contract with you to not only sell your personal information but obtain more by some rather “shady” means. This isn’t a new a thing that has just begun recently, Annalee Newitz wrote an article back in 2005 (https://www.eff.org/wp/dangerous-terms-users-guide-eulas)regarding the dangers of EULAs and what it is exactly that we are accepting to before we can install our software. Times have changed and there is a new dynamic to the EULA story now. The mega publisher EA (Electronic Arts) released a PC gaming platform a little over a year ago called Origin in what was an attempt to run a similar store to what Valve has in its Steam program. The store would offer EA games for the PC for purchasing and digitally downloading to play. This is fine and frankly a good business decision; however when Origin came out the EULA stated that in order to install and use Origin you have to accept to allow EA complete access to scan your entire computer for all software, how often you use that software and other various hardware profiles you may have. Popular games such as Battlefield 3 could not be played without an account on Origin leaving many to reluctantly accept these bogus terms and conditions. You can read more about the EA and Origin debacle in the article John Walker wrote for Rock, Paper, Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/24/eas-origin-eula-proves-even-more-sinister/) a gaming magazine.

Even though we have seen a lot of great benefits in the last decade there are still risks out there and being knowledgeable about those risks is the best way to keep ourselves safe.





Walker, John, EA’s Origin EULA Proves Even More Sinister (08/24/2011) http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/24/eas-origin-eula-proves-even-more-sinister/

Newitz, Annalee, Dangerous Terms: A Users Guide to EULAs (02/17/2005) https://www.eff.org/wp/dangerous-terms-users-guide-eulas

What is the Next Stage in Social Development?

Here we are standing on the edge of the future, with a quick glance behind us you can see the road of various social networking sites that have risen and fallen in the wake. We've gone from MySpace to Facebook and Napster to Spotify. What once was a social website you would visit after your school was done or after dinner on the family computer has grown to the point that it is virtually at our sides keeping us in constant contact and helping guide our decisions on a daily basis. So where do we go from here? Where can we go from is a more important question. I believe I have the answer, augmented reality. If you’re not sure what augmented reality is don’t feel bad, it hasn't exactly caught on in a big way yet but is gaining steam constantly. Augmented reality is a fusion of reality and technology at its most basic level. Remember those SciFi movies you used to watch where the heroes would have a computer in their brain that would interface through their vision or eyes in some sort of a way? That’s what augmented reality is in a sense, currently you can find a lot of great smart phone apps that are utilizing augmented reality to allow you to view real time GPS through the camera that will pick out hot spots and display information such as reviews. Yet other apps use augmented reality to play real time games such as Ingress (http://www.ingress.com/) a game that allows users to walk around town capturing and closing portals. 

It can be hard to wrap your mind around it sometimes, and for that I’m going to apologize because before you read any further you have to go watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAXTQL3jPFk) of Google’s Project Glass and if you were having trouble gasping it before this is going to blow your mind. It’s one thing to use the camera of your phone to see real time information on a screen, but to have it all directly through a small pair of glasses directly in front of your eyes is all together another mind boggling thing. Social media is all about sharing, connecting, and interfacing with each other; I believe that augmented reality is the next logical step in that direction allowing us even faster access to share the world around us. Another important key I believe will play a huge role in the future of social media is interactivity. Social media tycoons such as Facebook and Twitter have a well-established foothold in the game at the moment, but as more companies begin to provide new services it will be the ones that interface well with each other that will have the best chance.

How will this future affect us? Some might be thinking “Oh great I can see now already, I’m going to get pop-ups directly in my field of vision!”, and to be honest that’s a completely rational fear that has a real possibility. It’s possible this could be a huge step for consumers, allowing us to simply look at a product we’re interested in purchasing and seeing what the last ten people thought of the product or even better the last five that specifically bought that product from the exact same location you’re at right then. Marketers and corporations will have another opportunity to advertise to us, and in some cases it might be alright to know what sort of deals the five similar stores in front of me are offering so I can choose the best one. There is no way to tell exactly how it will play out, but to me the combination of reality and social media technology seems inevitable and the only next logical step towards the future.




TechAppNews (09/26/2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAXTQL3jPFk

NinticLabs Google, Ingress (12/02/2012) http://www.ingress.com/Zeman, Eric, Smartphones

The Social Impact of Electronic Communication

You probably receive an average of about 5-10 emails a day, and if your anything like me you probably take a quick glance and delete them unless something catches your eye. A large majority of us are seeing these emails throughout the day on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. Without even thinking about it we’ve gone from a form of communication that was simply looked at as a cheaper free version of the postal service to an instant communication tool used for a variety of reasons ranging from personal to business, and even pleasure. So what type of impact do all these instant avenues of communication have on us? According to a recent study by CDW IT Monitor (http://www.cdwitmonitor.com/nationalMonitor_may12.php) suggests that the use of smartphones and tablets in the workplace are increasing efficiency and productivity while lowering overall costs. But if you take a moment to think about it, does it not make sense? Of course you can be much more efficient on a construction job site when you can use an app to simply track all of the deliveries and their arrival times, or use a tablet to work through design issues with other construction bosses that may not even be on the site. In virtually every job I can think of I believe I could find a beneficial use for these new forms of communication. Nathan Eddy wrote an article for eweek.com (http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Tablet-Smartphone-Use-Increasing-Worker-Productivity-CDW-779688/) where he broke down the CDW IT Monitor report (previously linked above) and in his article he states that the top three most common uses for tablets in the workplace are sales, replacing printed material, and workgroup collaboration.

Smartphones and tablets may obviously affect our working lives, but what about our personal lives? Being more instantly connected has had both its benefits and downfalls to our society. Some will say that we are creating a void in our personal relationships with others and that this rift is making interaction between people harder. Yet others believe that it has allowed us to be more expressive of our true feelings, albeit in some cases a little too truthful. Whichever side of the fence you stand on in regards to the issue one thing is seemingly not going to change, and that is that it is here to stay and getting faster and more connected every day. In my opinion I feel that we as a society need to learn how to use these technologies to adapt to the new social structures that are being created daily. I firmly believe that as time goes on most of us will adapt and learn that what we say is viewed by other people and not just floating around in space like a private journal; and some will have to learn the hard way but in the end all will learn. There is another dark corner in this room that only seems to be getting darker as we advance our communication abilities, and that is the old “texting and driving” issue. Many of us grew up when cell phones where first on the rise and at the time you could make a call while driving. It was dangerous then, but then text messaging hit the scene and it became a huge issue. Texting and driving was about as dangerous as it could get on the roads because your eyes where averted while typing. I fear that because a smartphone has more options for communication such as IM and email that they are even more distractions on the road. Eric Zeman who wrote an article on InformationWeek.com (http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphones-tied-to-25-of-us-car-crashes/231001237) 25% of all US car crashes are from smartphone use while driving. It could be poor education in regards to use of phones while driving that is responsible or people just never hearing about the dangers in the first place. Many smartphones now either have apps available or come with them loaded already that allow drivers to use voice recognition to send the phone commands, this allows the driver to keep their hands on the wheel at all times and eyes on the road. It may be that these are the tools that need to be brought to light in a much larger scale.


CDW Corporation (05/15/2012) http://www.cdwitmonitor.com/nationalMonitor_may12.php

Eddy, Nathan, Tablet, Smartphone Use Increasing Worker Productivity: CDW (05/16/2012) http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Tablet-Smartphone-Use-Increasing-Worker-Productivity-CDW-779688/

Zeman, Eric, Smartphones Tied to 25% of US Car Crashes (07/8/2012) http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphones-tied-to-25-of-us-car-crashes/231001237

Analysis of the Requirements for a Recent Program or Game

Guild Wars 2 is a stunningly beautiful game that gives us a glimpse into a fantasy world that is awe inspiring beyond words. Whether its terrain, game characters, apparel, or structures the detail used to finely craft every inch of this virtual world is exceptional. If you have no clue what Guild Wars 2 is or what it looks like I would suggest checking out this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hVAW3bcMBQ) posted by IGNentertainment when the game first came out, it is full of wonderful footage that shows the game off. What could I possibly say that could make that sound any better than it already does? The answer; almost anyone with a computer can play it and it looks extremely good when scaled down for lower end PC’s. Allow me to explain why this is. To begin you have to understand that Guild Wars 2 began production almost 10 years ago, and at the time they began developing on cutting edge technology. Fast forward a decade and technology has advanced but the game has its foundations set in older technology (such as directx 9), and because of this older generation machines can handle running the game much easier than you would anticipate. It’s also important to note that due to the type of game it is (MMO or Massively Multiplayer Online) the resources required to run it are larger than that of other types.

So what exactly are the specifications to run this game? According to ArenaNet’s support page these are the minimum requirements to run Guild Wars 2:Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

Let’s take a look at these specs and analyze exactly how old your computer can be and still meet the minimum requirements. The minimum requirement for the OS (Operating System) is Windows XP Service Pack 2. Since Windows XP there has been 3 new OS’s from Microsoft, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Virtually every computer running Microsoft Windows today is using XP or higher. To break the processor down easily we’ll simply say that the game requires at least a dual core processor. Dual core processors are pretty common by today’s standards, in fact most smart phones have dual core processors and just recently there have been a couple of smart phones featuring quad core processors on the market. Graphics cards are a bit trickier to analyze so I’m going to use the brand I’m most familiar with ATI. I actually owned an old ATI X1800 about seven or eight years ago so I decided to do a search quick and see if I could find how much they are going for today, it was a couple hundred dollars back then. What I found when I searched a couple of websites was a placeholder on Newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102655) where they used to sell the graphics card but since have discontinued it. Most modern computers built in the last decade will have about 2gb of RAM and at least 25gb of hard drive space. When you break it down I can probably say that I had exceeded the minimum requirements to run Guild Wars 2 almost a decade ago; however today is a different story.

IGNentertainment (09/12/2012)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hVAW3bcMBQ

ArenaNet, Guild Wars 2 Windows System Requirements (09/09/2012) https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1119/session/L3RpbWUvMTM1MzMyNTY0My9zaWQvSmtRanRGYmw%3D

Newegg.com, ATI Radeon X1800 (11/18/2012)  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102655

Analysis of a Specific Medical Advancement

Several years ago I remember first hearing about stem cell research, and at the time it was not a very hot topic. However it did not take long before it became the spotlight of biotechnology and the hottest topic of debate between the scientific community and many religious or spiritual organizations. In case you have been living under a rock for the last decade I’ll quickly explain what stem cells are exactly and why they found themselves at the center of such a heated debate.

Cells are the building blocks of our bodies and must constantly be replaced with new ones as the old ones die and fall away. Our bodies have to constantly produce skin, blood, hair, and muscle cells on a daily basis and they accomplish this daunting task through the use of stem cells. Stem cells are the cells in our body that have the ability to either split into two separate stem cells or become two cells of something like hair or skin. Every single one of us has and uses stem cells in our bodies every day, but there is another type of stem cells and these are the ones that have been the most debated. Embryotic stem cells are similar to the stem cells that we create, however they are only found in babies that are still growing because unlike our stem cells they have the ability to not only split into hair, skin, muscle, and blood cells but any type of cells in our entire body. This type of a stem cell can be used to repair previously un-repairable body parts such as limbs or major organs. If you are interested in watching a video that can better explain the science behind stem cells I would recommend watching this video by EuroStemCell (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-3J6JGN-_Y) on youtube. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding embryotic stem cell research in the last several years. Some believe that it is considered playing the role of “God” and that we should simply not be experimenting with this type of research at all. Others admittedly do not know much about the subject but recall others saying that the only way to get embryotic stem cells is through unborn babies, in particular those from abortions. This is not the case however and in fact most embryotic stem cells come from umbilical cord donations which have a very large amount of embryotic stem cells. Yet a majority of the scientific community stands behind their research and feels that it is vitally important to push this biotechnology out of the clinical trials phase and into the medical market place.

The advancement of stem cells in the medical field has been and continues to be a long hard road. No matter where you stand on this road morally or theoretically the evidence is beginning to pile in favor of these procedures at a rate that simply cannot be ignored. Wired.com published an article in 2003 (http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2003/03/57944?currentPage=all) about a boy who was involved in a nail gun accident that caused him to undergo open heart surgery, after the surgery his only options to live where either a heart transplant or become the first patient to use stem cells to attempt reconstruct the hearts destroyed tissue. The procedure took 4 days to incubate the stem cells in his body and then a week after they were transplanted on his broken heart wall he was all set to go home and finish recovering. This type of success story has played out over and over again over the last decade. Several years ago China legalized stem cell use for medical treatment and there are a ton of documented cases of successful use that is readily available with a little bit of searching. Many of these cases are almost unbelievable at first such as people who have been paralyzed for most of their lives going to China for treatments and returning in as little as a few months walking on their own.

EuroStemCell.org (06/14/2011)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-3J6JGN-_Y

Philipkoski, Kristen, Stem Cells Heal a Broken Heart (03/07/2003) http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2003/03/57944?currentPage=all

Technology Trends of the Early 21st Century

A trend by definition is “a general direction in which something is developing or changing”. I don’t know about you, but for me just about anything I can find in my house that runs on electricity or a battery and either lights up or makes noise I can find something older and more primitive that helped shape what it is today. Much like the past has shaped the technology we are using today so are we forging the path ahead of use for the future. Can you remember some things that you used to use a little over a decade ago that you no longer use, but are instead using improved versions of? Remember watching VHS and DVD’s? We still watch movies and television shows, but now we do it on Blu-Ray players or stream them online using services like Netflix. Did you get a flat screen television in the past? Remember how cool it was that the screen didn’t conform to the shape of the tubes that produced images you were watching; now to think of a television that is below the standard 720p-1080p definition is somewhat painful. How about sharing the good old family landline to call up your friends and meet up for an evening out, do you remember doing that? Cell phones have replaced landlines as we used to know them to the point that according to an article posted on cellphones.org; 50% of the younger generations have never even used a landline!

As the definition dictates a trend will develop and change never dying out but adapting to use new technology and become more useful and efficient. Going between cellphones.org’s wonderfully laid out statistics sheet for differences between cell phone use in 2000 versus 2009 and mobiThinkings statistics on current cell phone usage for 2012, I was able to put together some rather interesting facts if you’re willing to follow me here. In 2000 an average of 1 out of 10 people had a cell phone, and in 2009 that number jumped all the way up to 6 out of every 10 people owned cell phones. In the most current statistics polled 8.67 out of every 10 people own a cell phone; if you round it up that leaves 1 out of every 10 people without a cell phone. However just to be on the safe side we will say it is 8 out of every 10 people, but with the rate of change between 2009 and 2012 being about 20%; following this rate of change by 2015 we will be very close 10 of 10. However the rate of change seems to only increase and not decrease. What does this mean? I’d like to think that it means that cell phones are coming close to the same place that landlines where at the turn of the millennium and that something bigger is on the horizon, but only time will tell.

Interestingly enough, when cell phones first began to see a rise in use everyone was uncertain about how the radiation from them would affect our health. Now we can look back at that old myth and laugh as we carry our cell phones on us virtually all day and all night. Medical technology has been on a trend in the early 21^st century also. Christian Nordqvist wrote an article rather recently for Medical News Today regarding the trends in life expectancy in humans. In the early 20^th century the average life expectancy was 31 years old and in 2010 the world average was at 67.2 years. That is a rather drastic jump in life expectancy, considering the average’s up to 52000 years prior fluctuate between 20-30 occasionally going a bit higher and lower but never very far from that range. Much of this can be attributed to the advances and strides that we’ve made in medicine over the last several years, we are able to be more consistent with lifesaving treatments and medicines that ever before in history.

So where does this leave us? By my calculations this leaves us on the highway to the future cruising in a hot red convertible with the top down on a hot summer day. We are moving into the future at a fast pace and we should all take the time to be aware of it so we can embrace it and help build upon it.

Cellphones.org (2/19/2010) http://cellphones.org/blog/whats-happened-with-cell-phones-this-decade/#axzz2BKCN8H00

mobiThinking, Global Mobile Statistics 2012 Part A (5/23/2010) http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#subscribers

n.p. (2012, October 2). "People Worldwide Living Longer, A New Challenge, Says United Nations." Medical News Today. Retrieved fromhttp://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/250989.php.