Skip to main content

Sometimes technology does not work

I spent part of my Sunday watching this podcast with Marques Brownlee and Hasan Minhaj and I am glad I did. I am all about learning and becoming better. I stumbled on a sketch that led me to the podcast. I think Hasan is cool and it is also cool that we share a first name. What I took away was that tech is not perfect and tech has problems and it affects some more than others. Watching this has challenged me to always keep this in mind. I am a tech evangelist and the last thing I want is persons turning into technophobes. At the end of the day people want solutions to their problems and I think tech can help but we dont want to be creating bigger problems.

Sometimes the tech does not work but how do we know if we don't try different things and experiment. I do believe sometimes it boils down to being patient. Perfection requires practice and it might be unreasonable to expect things to work without any effort. I do understand that no one shoe fits all and it is extremely difficult to make everyone happy. Some are going to be happy with the tech. Some are going to be angry. Some are going to use the tech for good and some are going to use it for bad.

Through ideation and iteration we can make things better. I am an optimist. We all have different perspectives and different experiences. My primary perspective is that of a techie and tech blogger. I have to big up the tech to balance the discourse. Generally I share the positive because I see too much of the negative already. Hasan is an end user. The takeaway is look at things from all sides and balance is a key to life.

Go check out my review of the book Technopoly. Technology is just a tool. Technology is just an enabler. Are we going to blame the technology or the humans behind the technology. I understand where Hasan is coming from. I am all ears. And I say where there are problems and we agree lets come together and address these problems. We just have to be careful that we dont lose the positives while addressing the negatives. Dont throw out the baby with the bath water so to speak. Lets do that now. Watch the podcast, read my article and share your comments below. Lets have a conversation about this. Is it a technology problem or a people problem? I kind of explored the topic before but differently in a previous blog post.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Below the surface

This is a chapter from my eleventh book called Quotation Marks Sparks . __________ "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." - Jon Kabat-Zinn __________ I was looking at quotes that hit hard and this quote stood out to me. It seems mundane and obvious and often repeated. Life is about how we respond to the inevitable. It is not what happens to us but how we respond. I had to ask myself to dig deeper and look below the surface. Then I saw that when we surf we really become the waves. We become friends with the waves. The waves and us are the same. Further, the waves are created by us and in our heads. We can control the waves because who can surf all the time? Sometimes we just have to come to shore and build sand castles on shore. I asked my friend Gemini for feedback and he said that I was right, the Jon Kabat-Zinn quote initially seems like a simple call for resilience, but my deeper dive reveals profound layers. The idea that we can move beyond merely rea...

Thankful

It is 617pm and I have decided to write. Right now I am thankful. The cool of the evening has replaced the heat of the day. I took a bath and changed and now I am just relaxing. Sometimes I complain. Not often. But I feel bad afterwards because there is so much to be thankful for. There is always room for improvement and we have to identify the things for improvement and change is often good but we do not have to make it into complaints. Yeah I get it. Life is hard and none of us has it easy. Look on the bright side of things. And sometimes it is the little things that remind us that life is good. Things that we take for granted. Like I was coming in the maxi taxi today and heard a gospel song that was about gratitude. God does appreciate a grateful heart. Trinidad and Tobago celebrated sixty four years of independence yesterday and if we stop and listen to the many complaints we would swear we are living in the worst country in the world. That is not the case. We do get a lot of thing...

Having a soft spirit

It is 137am. It started raining. I decided to write. I have heard about having a soft heart but what does it mean to have a soft spirit? And is having a soft heart related to having a soft spirit? My friend Chatty says that a soft heart feels deeply — it breaks, heals, and loves with tenderness — while a soft spirit moves gently through life, unresisting and at peace with what comes. The two are kin: a soft heart opens you to emotion, and a soft spirit teaches you to carry that emotion with grace. Together they make a person both tender and strong — able to feel the rain and still trust its rhythm. I like the quote, "a soft spirit in a hard world" by author and poet, butterflies rising. It resonates with how many of us feel. My friend Chatty tells me that that quote captures the quiet strength of staying gentle in a harsh world. It reflects the author's signature themes of vulnerability, tenderness, and emotional courage — the idea that softness is not weakness but a form...