Morning Do

For my last blog entry, I decided to talk about the technology and it’s improvements to everyday life with respect to what I’ve used since I’ve woken up this morning, so there will not be a source article except that of myself. I decided to do this because as I was getting ready for the day, a few tough questions decided to run through my mind. Everything I’m going to compare is going to be compared to the Civil War era, just to make sure everybody gets the idea of how primitive we’re talking here.

The first question that came into my head was the alarm clock. Obviously electricity had not been invented yet back then and from living on a farm where there are chickens before, the rooster does not always cackle at dawn. I know some of us have biological alarm clocks, that is where we just wake up everyday at the same time everyday. Another idea would be the mechanical alarm clock, you know, your classic alarm clock with the two bells on top. But now maybe going farther back in time, before this invention how did everyone wake up on time? Did everybody just sleep in till the wanted?

The second question that came to mind was taking a shower. This actually raised two questions. What kind of soap, and how good was it, did they use and could they even take showers? I was starting to wonder as I used four different washes, shampoo on my hair, CeraVe Face-wash on my face, Benzoil Peroxide on my shoulders, and body wash for the rest of my body, how did people use the soap products that they had? Did they even have products, or was it just one product? I can remember going to some camps when I was a little kid for Boy Scouts and having to use a bar of soap to wash my entire body, hair and all. I didn’t mind but I’m sure some of the women out there wouldn’t be too happy with this practice. As for taking a shower, I think this was an invention that came with running water, unless you heated the water on another level of your house and ran pipes down to yourself. Needless to say, my morning would be considerably longer waiting for the water to heat up or I would be considerably smellier because I would have not taken a shower.

The last interesting piece of technology to help our (well mens, and I guess women’s, they shave their legs) mornings go smoother is the electric razor, or just razor in general. Before the invention of this at home shaving device, men would have to go to their local barber to get a good trim, and I’m not even sure if women shaved their legs. Now I wanna think back before the invention of the straight-blade at the barbershop. How did men shave their beards, or did they all just let them grow until they could use clippers and keep them decently trimmed? Personally, I have a problem growing facial hair and it’s not full at all so having to grow mine out and still look good would present a major problem.

Digital Distractions

Technology continues to make our world faster paced everyday and what better evidence than digital billboards. Basically called a “TV on a stick” by The New York Times, these large electronic billboards are able to display multiple adds instead of just having your generic painted on add being displayed for months at a time. Instead, advertisers rotate every five to six seconds between adds. This allows for more advertisers to take up a single spot and is beneficial to the advertising company because they can now make five or six times the profit on a single location than what was originally projected. This is a perfect example of faster paced. You are getting more profit quicker and showing more advertisements in the same amount of space.

This new sense of speed in the advertising market is causing some rumblings with some activist groups such as Scenic Michigan. Problems arise when you take into consideration the ability to post rich colors that never fade and are bright at night. It is easy to see how these new billboards can grab your attention away from the road. Ironically however, I’ve always thought the purpose of a billboard was to get you to look at them. So in a sense, they are doing their job very well, but that would have to be the same as saying cigarettes are doing their job well also. Michigan lawmakers have even gone as far to put a hold on the building of these signs for two years, even though there has been no clear evidence that this new type of advertising is going to cause more crashes.

I, personally, am a fan of this new technology. Instead of creating multiple covers to go on a billboard, only to have them eventually fall off and liter the countryside, you will have the screen which you can automatically update daily and even hourly if need be. Another reason I am a fan of this is because our family business is looking into investing in one. We would be able to post up-to-the-second deals and specials and we believe it would be very beneficiary to have a tool like this. After all, there are laws in place to prohibit flashing lights and words. Also, what’s the difference if there was a regular billboard there, people are still going to look. You can also take the chicken standing out in front of a store waiving a sign as an example. If you are going to outlaw the digital billboards, I also believe the chicken costume should be outlawed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/technology/02billboard.html?ref=technology

Technology Fail

Anytime a company recalls 8.5 million units of their product, you know something has gone terribly wrong. Poor judgment, lack of quality control, and just pure laziness are the key factors that play into foreign based automaker Toyota’s recent recall of 8.5 million vehicles.
Unless you’re out of the main stream news, you know what’s been unearthed with this company in recent months but I’ll touch briefly. Accelerator problems have forced cars to speed out of control. Couple this with the now evident braking problems and you have a death trap straight from Japan. You also shouldn’t forget that all Toyota recalls include that nice, expensive, luxurious Lexus you just purchased also. At least you can listen to a premium sound system and have seat heaters while you’re driving out of control. Not so bad meow is it?
The question that has really struck me through this whole ordeal is why people continue to buy foreign vehicles. You can go buy something from Germany (Volkswagen) and support the company that helped Hitler. A better idea would be to buy something from Mitsubishi because they were the ones who built the airplane that strafed your grandfather in WWII. Same scenario goes for Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Toyota. How these companies where even aloud to exist after the war is beyond me.
The Toyota recalls are just another piece of evidence that exposes how unpatriotic Americans really are. Every time I see somebody buy a new vehicle from these companies I fill up with disgust. I don’t care if you do think it’s cheaper or not and I don’t want to hear any of that gas-mileage nonsense because nobody ever does their research to find out that GM, Ford, and Chrysler have just as good if not better economical vehicles. Try out the Chevrolet Volt for example, 230 mpg, no joke, as reported by CNN (http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/11/autos/volt_mpg/). Compare the price and fuel economy with the Toyota Prius and you will be shocked. You don’t even need to compare the price anymore, just compare reliability. Which vehicle is going to take you from point A to point B safely?
I’m sure somebody will say “Well I can’t afford the Chevy Volt.” That’s fine, go purchase a Chevy Cobalt with the 4-cyl. engine and a five-speed transmission. 37 EPA estimated fuel economy for around ten grand and that’s new. There is no reason Americans can’t buy domestic vehicles anymore, they are just too lazy to actually look and fall into the assumption that foreign cars are better. I am hoping that this recent technology blunder of Toyota’s will open up the public’s eyes and show them what is really happening around them.
http://topstories.foxnews.mobi/quickPage.html?page=17224&content=33933861&pageNum=-1
Oh, and by the way, Honda has recalled almost 1 million vehicles for malfunctioning airbags.

Fuel Economy

With the recent economic scare and General Motors having to go bankrupt and take loans from the federal government, many would come to wonder how this company is ever going to find a way to put itself back on its feet. GM took a punch, but is not knocked out yet. They have been putting extensive time and research into many new types of alternative fuels, harnessing this technology and hopefully using it to bring them back to the dominating status of automobile sales that they have once been known for.
One of these new types of technology that will hopefully bring GM back to life is fuel cell technology. This new style of technology requires hydrogen as the fuel and its only emission is water vapor. The vehicles being tested by real-life people in real-life scenarios are said to have a range of 168 miles before having to stop for a five to seven minute refill. This new milestone in emissions and fuel technology should be able to bring GM back into the playing field and get rid of their bad reputation for having gas-guzzling vehicles, which isn’t even true to begin with. You can go ride around in your little smart car all you want, but when you’re rear-ended by a semi while exciting the highway, how much gas you saved won’t matter if you’re not alive.
Take for example all the people who saved their money and went and bout Toyota vehicles lately. Save all that money just to have your vehicle accelerate uncontrollably. I don’t know about you, but I would rather have a reliable vehicle over a cheap one.

Here’s where I found my article:
http://www.gm.com/experience/technology/fuel_cells/news/2009/million_091109.jsp

Is Technology an Improvement or an Invention?

A new twist on an old technique. Technology works its way into our lives every day, but is it really creating new items or just improving the ones already here? Take the ipod for example. A record player played music decades ago and so does an ipod now. They do the same exact thing but on an extremely different presentation format. The same is true for one of the most technological rich environments of all time, the military. A new Humvee simulation is just another form of training troops, the same thing which has to be and has been done for centuries.

This new simulation uses amusement-park-ride hydraulics attached to a Humvee to create what seems to the driver and passengers as a real Afghanistan environment. The sole purpose of this simulation is to familiarize soldiers with the situation of a roadside bomb. The Humvee has a screen inside, responsive to the driver and passenger controls. The simulation is so realistic as to smoke pouring into the cab of the Humvee after being hit with a roadside bomb.

Irony takes over next. An extreme technological advancement created to fight a simple and antique style of warfare. So much thought is put into the realness of the simulation along with the hard-work it takes to set up a simulation and develop the technology while so little time and effort is put into the roadside bombs.

With the irony of the new technological twist to combat an old style of war, is would seem to make you wonder if we are overdoing ourselves. Should we switch back to our old ways? Is the new training procedures preparing the troops too much? This question is one I find very interesting and thought probing. Since the simulation is assumed to be so accurate, will a soldier limit themselves to only their capabilities inside the simulation and not be able to evaluate something that hasn’t shown up in the simulation. Does this new technology make the soldier have a sort of “tunnel vision”?

Whether it be record players to ipods or war games to virtual reality simulations, technology is bettering the environment all around us. One has to look and think though, is technology creating new things or just making existing ones better? If your answer is that technology is there for the betterment of existing materials, how much better can things get?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/us/23simulator.html?ref=technology