The Technology Effect

Is the Technology effect changing we way we think and live our lives

I doubt many of you could imagine a day without a smartphone, whether that be an iPhone, Samsung, Blackberry etc. These pieces of tech genius have changed the way we think and ultimately the way in which we process information. Information is now so easily recallable through these neat pieces of tech that our brain now doesn’t need to work anywhere near as hard as people did 20 years ago. Even something as simple as a contact list on your phone has had such an impact. Have you ever tried remembering 50 phone numbers? Most people can’t remember their own! Couple your smartphones with the internet and it’s frightening how much information is actually available through a couple of clicks.

Before Google and Wikipedia (up for discussion) information was a lot more limited. To put that into perspective if I asked you the population of any city in the world this would be very difficult to answer without a search engine. But with the power of Google this information in available in an instant. Great amounts of information from every aspect of our existence is available. Whilst admittedly, not all of this is 100% accurate, this is now the world that we live in.

7 Tips to Keep Technology from Taking Over Your Life (from Wisdom 2.0) (Outside Link)

Arguably these big tech companies are engineering companies with lots of computer scientist’s working day and night trying to change a broken world. It would be fair to say that their universal goal is attempting to make everybody’s life easier and more efficient. My favourite example here is Uber – they have revolutionised taxis with a very simple user friendly app. But back to the point, even as far back as 2010, Google have had a clear idea of where they were directing tech. Their CFO stated that from traffic jams to excessive energy use can be solved by tech. These technologies attempting to change a broken world are often known as ‘smart technologies’ and this is silicon valley’s way of proposing change. It is not by chance that these big tech companies are as big as they are: Apple, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Google and Facebook just to name a few. These are huge companies making very tidy profits for their shareholders. In the past few years Silicon Valley has been producing 7 billionaires a year with 56 billionaires now living in the area.

Interesting article from “The Importance of Tech” team. Read about the other side.. (External Link)

Smart technologies have boundless potential in making our life more efficient, this can be compared to the way in which fridges and gas cookers did in the 1950’s and 1960’s. There’s a good chance these new smart technologies will have a similar effect on our everyday lives in areas such as for example as energy consumption and cooking practices.

A very popular topic in everyday life is the ability to save energy. In my last blog I briefly talked about Nest as a company but only touched on the functionality. Nest (owned by Google) has the potential to clean up in this current market. The thermostat which is easily installed into homes gives you the power to control the temperature from an app! It is very easily monitored and for example, even has the power to monitor your heating when you’re not home. The result is a lot less energy wasted and you get to add another cool little app to your collection!

Secondly, cooking can be deemed for some to be a tedious chore for some households (well it is in my opinion anyway!). However, smart tech is helping in ways to solve this problem. For example, take a look at induction cookers. This links back to saving energy as the device only turns on when the induction cooking pans or parts are touching the cooktop surface. Furthermore, the safety aspects involving induction cookers will wipe gas cookers out. We have all heard the stories of immediate risks such as gas leaks. What is less well know are the health risks that are associated to this… Take a look at: Vanguard NGR

It’s without a doubt tech is changing the way we live and it is my view that this is definitely for the best. However, there will inevitably always be the need to take some caution as to think that everything is perfect would be naïve.