Technology that you should know

I got to go to a concert last week (if you get a chance to see the Warped Tour…do it the bands are great) and I was fairly amazed at the level of technology that was being displayed not only by the venue, but all of the bands that I got to see. I seemed like sometime during the set someone in the band would mention that you could visit them on MySpace or some other website so that you could see the rest of their tour dates, or listen to a song off of their new album…isn’t technology great!

It’s not only the bands that are getting high-tech (okay, MySpace isn’t that high-tech, but a few years ago it would have been considered such), but everybody seems to be getting in on the act. I ran into a friend of my mother’s the other day who knew I was in the computer field and she just couldn’t wait to tell me all about the account that she has on twitter and second-life. Now this may not be Earthshaking to you, but you have to know that this person is in their late 60’s and until fairly recently (5 years ago) they never even touched a computer before. Now she is staying in touch with her friends and family no matter where they are scattered.

Where is this discussion leading? I guess what I am trying to say can be best summed up in the immortal words of Mr. Miyagi (okay it was Pat Morita, but you get the picture), “Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle; sooner or later get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do "yes" or karate do "no." You karate do "guess so, just like grape. Understand?". I would replace the word “Karate” with “Technology” because in this business you either stay up with all of the new technology that is being made available every day, or your IT career might be the same as the grape…squished.

There are many ways to at least hear about what’s going on in the IT world around you, SlashDot is one of my favorites. You may also find an unending number of blogs out on the internet who’s only reason for being is to tell you all about new gadgets (http://newonthehorizon.blogspot.com/ is written by a few of the instructors that I work with and has been a great help to me…I know, shameless plug). Attending seminars or user group meetings are also other ways of hearing about new releases and products.

I guess to sum everything up, it is very easy to become so focused on what we are currently doing that we forget and stop to play with all of the new toys, but in this business you never know when you are going to be called upon to use some kind of new product floating around on the internet, so you better have at least a passing knowledge of what is available…or maybe you can ask your kids.