Technology: now, and then

Lets see, I graduated technical college in 1997. Worked for a high tech company called SHL Systemhouse from that point on and saw some pretty interesting changes in the tech world. Our company won the contract to supply high speed broadband internet connection to the greater Vancouver BC area, and believe me, that was quite a big deal. The software of the day back then was Windows 3.1 and 3.1 for workgroups, remember that? The software and hardware just didn’t get along that well, and when you arrived at a clients home to hook them up for internet access, quite often the computer would not recognize the network card that would magically make the connection work.

We would actually have to go to the extreme measure of installing two or more network cards in the computer and force the system to recognize just one of them, then, carefully remove the other one or two and hope that the settings held. Wow, the level of sophistication was not that high in the tech world at that time. That was then, and this is now, thank goodness. Ohh, and another thing that was on the cutting edge was that we were all given these weird looking devices from a small start-up company called RIM. It was at that time only a pager, didn’t have any cell phone capability but it was a huge leap of technology that no one else had at that time.

Now, we have windows 7 which is a welcome relief from previous disappointments from Microsoft. And just look at the level of growth of social media such as Face book, Twitter, Linked In, Google, Yahoo, Word press and much, much more. This is an incredible advancement of genius concepts that has found a home in our modern world. For some, its an exciting time to be alive, for others, its scary, unsettling, disturbing and unwelcome. How is it that society has separated itself so much using technology as the guidepost. If you have any stories of how technology has changed your life, leave us a comment below. Thanks, Rick.