Future Tech

Computer Care: Today’s high-tech gadgets are just the start

By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com
UPDATED: December 6, 2013 10:41 p.m.

When I was a kid, I would create things in my dad’s workshop that would revolutionize society. They were futuristic and impressive looking — only they didn’t do anything.
As I got older, I at least made the lights turn on, but that’s where it stopped.
I read comics about Dick Tracy’s wristwatch, and saw science fiction television where mad scientists created the strangest gadgets. I watched villains fight my hero Superman with then state-of-the-art technology. The flashing lights on all the spaceships I saw were impressive. I was inspired.

When I finally got to visit Mission Control as an adult, I was surprised to see that my inventions of the late ’50s didn’t look much different than NASA’s devices of the late ’60s.

Today’s technology truly amazes me. There are now approximately 2 billion personal computers on desks on the planet, in addition to the 6.5 billion mobile phones in use worldwide.

Think about what they do for a moment. In mere seconds, we can send a message to anyone. We can pull up a weather forecast, check traffic patterns or see if our plane is running late.

There are bank balances and sports scores to check, photos from loved ones to view, the ability to update your Facebook status and, oh yeah, call anyone from anywhere.

I have in my phone Internet access, a camera, a level, a compass, a barcode scanner, a document scanner, a flashlight, a virtual assistant, music, movies, a calendar and a to-do list, as well as unlimited maps and, of course, email and texting ability.

And I was impressed that Captain Kirk could talk to the Enterprise from Rigel One with his communicator. Aside from the fact that he could beam aboard, I do believe we’ve got him beat.

Now we have various wearable computers on the market. There is the WIMM One, an Android watch that Dick Tracy would love, and Google glasses, the eyeglass computer display that would make Kirk envious.

We have gone from mouse-controlled devices to touch- and voice-controlled. Now researchers are working on thought-controlled devices, and it’s not science fiction.

In Japan, thought-controlled robots are being developed. Google has announced that they are testing a fleet of robots for various purposes. Robots, although perhaps not yet mainstream, have worked their way into real life, so to speak.

There is talk of thought control use in car navigation systems and for assistance with people with disabilities and the elderly, among other areas.

Moore’s Law states that the number of components in our technological devices (and the speed at which they deliver) will be doubled approximately every 18 months. This, in fact, has held true since the 1960s. So not only are our gadgets getting smaller and smarter, they’re also getting faster.

In retrospect, I recall how slow my first 286-SX computer was, running Windows 3.1. Think of how we will feel about our laptops of today, 30 or 40 years from now. We will snicker at their quad-core processors and their paltry terabyte of storage space.

Did you even consider back 30 years or more that you would be wearing a portable phone, talk to your car’s navigation system or be able to access map information via a satellite? How about hanging your television on the wall? That would all be absurd, right? Yet we do these things now without even giving it a second thought.

In the coming year we can look forward to some new innovations. USB devices for example, will be bilateral, meaning there will be no more upside-down when you attempt to plug them in.

Aside from the ever-evolving iPhones and X Boxes, there will be new gadgets. Virtual glasses are being honed for mainstream use. Watch for Meta space Glasses and the Foc.us Headset, both coming soon.

We will more than likely see more ergonomically designed devices, including curved displays on our portable gadgets, smarter TVs and better home automation.

MIT researchers are currently working on software that will make our Internet connections three times faster than they are now. Leap Motion, a Texas company, says mouse clicks may be a thing of the past as soon as their hand-motion technology gets refined.

“It’s a new era in which people interact with digital information as naturally as if it were real,” said Leap Motion co-founder David Holz.

And research continues. There is a group of scientists who gather with the purpose of making human space travel beyond our solar system to another star a reality within the next 100 years. They discuss the possibilities of warp drives and wormholes. Perhaps they will beam aboard.

Those researchers say that they want to go faster than the speed of light, regardless of what Einstein said — and they don’t want to stop at Mars: To infinity and beyond.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

Homage to Technology

Computer Care: Thanks for technology, which makes our lives better


By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com


POSTED: December 11, 2010 1:00 a.m.

As the first decade of the new millennium draws to a close, I reflect back on all of the good things I have: health, happiness and my family top the list. But there is more. Without technology, I would not be happy.

I am grateful to be living at a time when technology abounds; when one innovation is topped by the next. Most likely those who lived in Edison's time felt the same way. Electricity was new to the world. There was the telephone and the light bulb. It must have been quite an exciting time to be alive, as it is today.

Twenty years ago, no one had a cell phone and all but a few had a personal computer. What will the next 20 years bring? I often wonder.

So I give thanks to technology and to those who were inspired to create the devices we live with and couldn't live without.

Einstein once said that imagination was more important than knowledge. Without the imagination of the following people, where would we be today?

Charles Babbage was a British mathematician who in 1856 came up the concept of programmable machines. Then 80 years later, along came another Brit, Charles Turing, who built a computer-like device that cracked German codes in World War II.

It was John Eckert and John Mauchly who built E.N.I.A.C., the original computer in 1946. It filled a huge room and took a crew to run it. It was the first, and the first to become obsolete. After 10 years, there was a better mousetrap. Thanks guys.

This brings us to the era of the personal computer. It was Ed Roberts who designed the Altair 8800 in 1975. It sold for a mere $400 and came in kit form. They were not the kits of today. You had to solder the motherboard yourself. You got a box of diodes, capacitors and transistors with a sheet of instructions. Thanks, Ed.

I also feel thanks are due to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac at Apple for coming up with the Graphical User Interface that began with the Mac in 1976, and is used by most computers today.

In 1975, the partnership of Bill Gates and Paul Allen created Microsoft and Windows. I thank Microsoft for coming out with Windows, especially Version 7. The world needed something to replace its predecessor Vista, in a bad way.

Then came alternative operating systems.

It was Linus Tovalds, a Finnish graduate student who came up with a thesis of Linux, a portable operating system in 1990. It is now an open-source (free) alternative to Windows or Mac the world over. There are dozens of distros or distributions, as they are called.

This brings me to Vic Hayes, the father of wi-fi. Without him, even laptops would still be tethered to a cable. Thanks, Vic.

What a bunch of brainiacs these guys were and are.

Alternative browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera, and then Chrome came about. We were no longer forced to use Internet Explorer.

Google appeared. I love Google. I give thanks for the opportunity to look up anything, at any time and get as many answers as I want.

Everything seemed to happen quickly after that. Windows evolved. Wireless was omnipresent. Everyone had a Web page, then a blog. They instant-messaged. They texted. They Twittered. They posted comments to their profile.

I am not grateful for Facebook. Frankly, I could live without it. It's nice, but really, I don't need it.

What I am grateful for is the ability to block certain entries from my Facebook home page and the ability to delete things I had written in haste.

I like my desktop. After all, I built it. But I really like my laptop. So I give thanks to those who take big things and make them smaller. I am grateful to be able to check my email in bed or at the kitchen table, should I desire.

I am extremely thankful for my spam filter. Free enterprise and freedom of speech are great, but I get a ton of junk email. At least this way I don't have to look at it.

Finally, I am grateful to my wife, Teressa, who encourages me every two weeks to come up with yet another column and my daughter, Rachel, who proofreads them for me. It is truly a family effort.

Also, I am grateful for the opportunity The Times has given me over the past three years by providing a forum for my thoughts.

I thank you my readers, for letting me share them with you.

So where would we be without all of those inventions and innovations? We'd be giving the postal service more business - we'd all be writing letters, reading actual books and newspapers. Landlines, pay phones and typewriters - anyone remember them?

Sure, we could live without all of the technological advances. But who wants to?

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly. Arthur welcomes your computer questions and ideas for future columns

Technology Break

A break from technology is good for the soul

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

POSTED June 25, 2010 11:32 p.m.

This column is usually written from home on my laptop. Most times there’s a TV on somewhere in the house; my cell phone is nearby and there is the ever-ringing land line. All of these potential distractions could keep me from writing.

This column’s first draft comes to you in longhand, written on a pad in front of a campfire from the woods north of Blood Mountain. I am here, camping with my daughter for a few days.

You surely realize that I enjoy technology as much as, if not more than, most everyone else. But on this occasion, I left my laptop at home, my phone in the car and have used electricity only to blow up my air mattress.

I’ve traded in my cell phone and computer for s’mores and a sleeping bag.

Why give up a perfectly good bed and all the conveniences of home, you ask? I believe that leaving technology behind every once in a while is healthy. As much as I like my computer and the Internet, a break is good and actually writing with a pen won’t kill me.

There are no emails, calls or text messages to reply to. There is no television or radio and the only sounds I hear are the wind in trees and the crackle of the fire. The only thing I have to connect with is nature, and it is a nice change. It’s like fasting; it’s good for your soul to give up what you like, at least temporarily. You may appreciate it that much more when you get back to it; at least I do.

Nothing is worse while in the woods when you are forced to endure the electronic noise of a fellow camper. I choose not have a TV, yet may still hear one from two sites down. Some folks just don’t understand camping etiquette.

I can’t understand why someone would go to the woods in a camper with a satellite dish strapped to a tree and a microwave bolted to the counter. Part of my enjoyment out there is being away from those devices. I especially enjoy making a fire and cooking with it and sitting by it.

iPods are great, but there are so many other things to listen to in the woods. You can always hear the Top Ten later. Give nature a chance for a change. Watching a stream or a waterfall and not hearing it is like walking through a flower bed without being able to smell it.

I used to know when the sun set, what phase the moon was in and the names and places of various constellations. I think technology helped to take that away from me.

Instead of trying to find Cassiopeia or Orion’s belt in the night sky while pondering The Big Bang Theory, I now tend to answer emails and send text messages while watching CBS’s Big Bang Theory on TV instead.

I used to listen to the wind and the birds, now all I hear is voice mail and my hard drive rebooting.

Sure, technology is great. Don’t get me wrong. I make a living using technology. I often stay up late researching various aspects of computing with my laptop. There is always a late night movie on TV, classic rock on the radio, catching up on Facebook and more that I couldn’t do without my techno-toys.

All I’m trying to say is taking a break is healthy. Your toys will be there after the break, for however long it may be.

Taking a vacation doesn’t have to be a trip to the Bahamas. Often all it takes is a change of your daily routine for a short while. That includes giving up your electronic devices. Like the old jingle went: “No phones, no lights, no motor cars; not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, it’s primitive as can be.”

Do it in the woods, the beach or in your own back yard. Just try it without TV, email or texting. You will find other, more basic things to do.

Primitive can be fun. Go for a walk; gather firewood or your thoughts; take a swim or take a nap. There is so much you could do.

Live dangerously: take off your watch, turn off the phone, ditch the to-do lists, the schedules and write a letter to a friend – a real letter. Surely you’ve got a pen and paper somewhere underneath all those CDs and cables.

There will be plenty of time when you get back for catching up on voice and e-mail, responding to texts and for reformatting your hard drive.

Email your friends when you get back and tell them how nice it was being incommunicado – what a nice change it was. Or wait and see how they respond to your letter that the mailman delivered to them.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly.

A Technology Retrospective

Computer Care: High-technology use has exploded in the last decade

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

UPDATED Jan. 2, 2010 1 a.m.

The first 10 years of life goes by the slowest. Think about it. You’re a child and you go to school. Every day is pretty much the same as the last. The monotony seems to go on forever. Every decade thereafter though, seems to quicken the pace somewhat.

In contrast, this past decade flew by. It seems like we were just anticipating the new millennium and here we are looking at 2010. But look back on what technology has given us in the last decade.

The cell phone grew up, along with personal computers and Internet use. We put iPods in our pockets, Bluetooth to our ears and plasma in our televisions. We love them and can’t live without them. Although it seems we’ve had this technology forever, it hasn’t been very long at all.

Consider looking back even further for a moment. We have come a long way. Post-World War II, we still had black-and-white televisions with rabbit ears and dial telephones with cords. We listened to monaural records and loved them. There were no cell phones, microwaves or space shuttles. Blackberries grew wild and computers were giant things that the government used. We are advancing at an incredible rate.

At the turn of the previous century, we were still getting used to the ideas of automobiles and light bulbs. Look how far we have come in that relatively short period of time from Edison and Ford to Jobs and Gates.

In the past year alone, our computers got smaller, faster and cheaper. We got a new version of Windows, perhaps not totally new, but a whole lot better than Vista. Google gave us the Chrome browser as an alternative to Internet Explorer and Firefox. Cell phones matured and got smarter over the last 10 years. Mobile computing has grown to the point that there are now laws against driving while texting (DWT?)

Gmail and the iPhone both grew up and grew in popularity. Facebook took off like nothing before. As of November, it reached more than a quarter-billion users. Consider it has only been around since 2003. To put that in perspective, ponder the following: Radio was around for 38 years before it had a mere 50 million listeners. It took television 13 years to gain that much of an audience. The Internet took only four years, in the U.S. alone, to reach 50 million users.

Computer use is said to reach the 2 billion mark this coming year. It hit 1 billion worldwide in 2002. The iPod sold 20 million units late this year. Facebook surpassed 300 million users in seven short years. The personal computer itself did not initially see that kind of growth.

Not everyone uses Gmail or has an iPhone, but it seems like everyone does have a Facebook account and at least one computer. We do love our technology.

So what will it have in store for us in the future? Well in the next year anyway, there will be some advancements.

Intel and AMD say we will see more cores added to our computer processors next year. We currently have dual and some quad cores. USB 3.0 will be out this spring, supposedly. It will be lots faster than its predecessors. Although backward compatible, the new hardware will come with a new plug. Just what I need; more cables.

Windows 7 will probably have its initial service pack, SP1 in 2010. All the "suites" will have their 2010 versions. I foresee Tune-Up 2010, Comodo 2010, Kaspersky, McAfee and Norton 2010, but I’m just speculating. Office 2010 will be there for certain, as it is already out in beta now.

I imagine touch screens will make more of a presence this coming year. Mobile computing will continue to grow as the ubiquitous cell phone matures.

We will undoubtedly be taking more to the road in coming years. The mobile office is the new wave.

Faster Wi-Fi and Ethernet is just around the corner. More municipalities will offer free Wi-Fi. Currently you may only find it in a few cities or coffee shops. New York City has a handful of free hot spots with more on the way. So does Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver and Cincinnati.

Even locally, until recently places like Starbucks offered Wi-Fi at a fee. But now it is free there, as well as at Panera’s, Atlanta Bread Company, Cici’s Pizza and a few other places around Gainesville.

The new multi-core Star Trek-like products will supposedly enhance our home office and home lifestyles. Many things will be tied together or networked – and not just our computers, either.

Ten years ago we couldn’t imagine hanging our TVs on the wall or communicating like Capt. Kirk. Today it’s a reality. It appears that Scotty is indeed getting ready to beam us aboard.

I don’t know about you, but I look forward to knowing what future technology lies around the corner in the coming decade. I only hope this one goes by more slowly.

Mr. Scott — Energize!

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly.

Changing Technology

Glazer: Changing technology turns fiction into reality

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

POSTED April 30, 2008 5:01 a.m.

Even when I was living in a cave back on Crete in 1973, I was always trying to find a better way to do things. I built a door of bamboo to keep the weather out. I devised an indoor fireplace that wouldn’t fill my cave with smoke. Over the course of a week I dragged a huge rock across the beach because it had a large flat surface that would become my table. Who knew then, when I was making bamboo wind chimes, that I would emerge from my cave and 30 years later become a computer technician? I may not invent the next best mousetrap, but I will certainly know how to fix it.

Before I had my first computer, a 386-SX Packard Bell almost 20 years ago, I had a Smith Corona Word Processor. Before I fixed computers, I was a writer. So naturally my tool of the trade would be a word processor. Early computers were emerging, but I thought it overkill to own one. I was a writer; what would I need with a computer?

There wasn’t an awful lot to do with one back then. The Information Super Highway was a dirt road and e-mail was in its infancy. Most people didn’t have a PC and besides they were expensive. So I processed words on my Smith Corona, printed hard copies of my columns and submitted them by mail. How archaic. That lasted a couple of years until I gave in and got what I thought to be futuristic then — my 386.

I was thrilled, waiting for those pages to load; images line by line. I was connected to the world, able to print in color and submit electronically. There weren’t many places to go, but one day I ended up in an AOL chat room for writers and met my wife-to-be. She assisted me with my new endeavor explaining why the chat room was quiet although full. They were in IM land I was told. Huh? So she sent me an Instant Message. One led to another and soon after, I moved from Florida to Georgia with my new 486-DX and married both Tess and technology.

Things are always changing. Here I am now, on my dual core Pentium 4 laptop with over a gigabyte of RAM. High tech you think? Hardly. It’s almost two years old. There are quad cores out there with 4 gigs of memory. But still, compared to my initial PC it’s hundreds of times faster.

Even the Internet is a work in progress. There is talk of a new one: an Internet for us and one for the folks who started it — the military and universities.

Technology has always amazed me. I look back at the past 50 years and see the changes from three-channel black and white television to the 300 channel satellite hi-definition color of today. We’ve gone from plain, black-corded telephones to wireless, cellular and VOIP. And the phones get smaller and more high-tech all the time.

We’ve gone from processing film in the darkroom to the computer and we have instant video — anywhere. LPs have become CDs as the sound quality has increased. The exciting launching of space capsules has turned into the mundane addition of space station inhabitants — often so common that we barely notice.

We can now use our computers to send messages, images and videos. We can travel the world virtually or buy tickets for the real thing. Products can be purchased and bills can be paid. You can trades stocks or baseball cards online. Thanks to computers and the Internet, encyclopedias have become obsolete. You can research anything from homework to why the sky is blue. And I once thought I didn’t need one.

Is it so far-fetched to think my girls will be watching holographic movies by the time they are my age? I often wonder what the next 50 years will bring. Will they be beaming themselves to places across town or to infinity and beyond? So much science fiction has become science fact.

As I watch Col. Carter travel across galaxies via the Stargate on TV, it makes me wonder, if NASA is secretly working on a real chapahai. Remember when we thought Dick Tracy’s communicator watch was fantasy? That isn’t even state-of-the-art anymore.

So to those of you who think you still don’t need a computer, I say phooey. The possibilities are limitless as to what you can do with one. I have 80-year-old clients tell me they couldn’t live without theirs. For the rest of you, beam yourselves aboard the bandwagon.

You won’t regret it.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician from Gainesville.