For today’s tech-tip, let us take a moment to appreciate our tech.
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I woke up because my iPhone alarm chimed, and with it came the notifications for today’s schedule.
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I enjoyed the coffee my coffee pot made for me while looking at the news on my tablet. It was terrible—the news, not the tablet—so I switched to a logic puzzle.
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While I was getting ready, I surfed YouTube for a video and played it in the background. It was the “Babysitting Blues” scene from the movie “Adventures in Babysitting.” That was 4 minutes of nostalgia heaven, and I don’t have to watch the rest of the movie—I feel like I already did. That means I felt like I watched a whole movie while getting ready for work. Total party bonus.
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Most people need their car to get to work, and that’s technology. It’s also full of it’s own technology, like the camera that prevents me from running over some kid’s bicycle or the glorious GPS that has saved me from my nonexistent sense of direction since it was invented.
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I work from home, but that means that I have a home office with a Mac. I have a printer, but SkyTech is a Green company, so we work digitally most of the time. So, I have multiple apps and programs running that allow me to work remotely. I can sign on to the server from here, and I can have a SkyTech Engineer sign into my computer to help me. Most of the business software we use is web-based. That means that our team can all access everything we need regardless of where we are. That’s essential because we travel to see our clients, and we have folks all over the country.
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And through it all, I’m on the phone—that amazing, high-speed computer that can connect me to anyone, use the web, get texts, send email, take pictures, watch videos, and play games for hours. Our phones are more powerful than early NASA projects, and we not only take it for granted that we can also use it as a music player, we complain when there’s a problem with reception, as though it is not a miracle that a message was just transmitted over thousands of miles, in the speaker’s voice, in real time, wirelessly.
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Tonight when I take food out of my refrigerator and place it into my microwave—it’s too hot outside to use the oven, which is also digital—and toss a load of laundry in the wash at the same time, I will think fondly of those who had to butcher whatever was hunted that day and cook it over a fire while someone else spent their whole day with chafed hands scrubbing their clothing against a ridged board in the river to accomplish what took me about three minutes of active work.
You are reading this, over the internet, at the same time as a bunch of other people, instantaneously, using a device that you probably feel you can’t live without. This is fabulous. People used to send messages by pigeon. The messages only went to one person—don’t ask me how the pigeon got it to the right person, because I have no idea—and it took a long time.
We design great cities, towering buildings and shining examples of technology. Pigeons poop on shiny things because they don’t like the light. They don’t share our priorities. This is way better.
If you can read this, hug your Engineer. If you don’t have one, call us. Not only do we want to help you, we always like hugs.