How has computing changed our world?

When we compare the technology that is available today compared to 10 years ago the difference is quite immense. Computer technology has changed the way we do a lot of day to day tasks. There are downsides to this as well but the benefits far outweigh the cons. It delivers us with tools to make our lives more fun, more productive and empowered...

Computers have changed the world. They have changed the way we do business and they have changed how we play. The power of the computer has changed the way we do a lot of day to day tasks.

Letís take photography as an example. The process of taking photographs and getting the images used to be a time consuming and often expensive process. You took the photographs, took the film to a photo developers then went back and go your finished photographs on glossy paper. For most people the task of actually developing the photographs was beyond their scope. The process of developing the actual photographs was very often entrusted to a photographer. The entire process of converting the images from film to paper took time and cost money.

Now the process is a lot simpler. You take a photo, plug your camera into your PC, transfer the image from your camera to your PC and its then available as a digital image. Having images stored in a digital format means you can do a lot more with them. Back in the old days of photography the picture you took was going to be the end result. Now you have the ability to modify and edit your images. Working with digital images gives you a lot more scope to let your creative side spill out.

If you are a traditionalist you can still get your images on paper. Either print them out using a printer plugged into your PC or use a company who provide digital image printing services. There are a lot of companies who offer this service. Even this is now a lot easier. There are websites that simply allow you to upload your images to their server and then they send you the printed photographs. When we compare the technology that is available today compared to 10 years ago the difference is quite immense. The quality has also improved. Modern digital cameras and high quality printers can produce just as good, if not a better an end result than traditional camera technologies.

Photography is just one area where the power of computing has changed our world. Music is another. All music used to be bought from record stores. Now you can pay for your music online and download it onto your computer. Music is becoming more and more portable. First it was vinyl records, then tapes and CD's now with music being made available in digital format it can be purchased and used with literally no tangible size. The music is just a computer file that you can store on a pc or MP3 player and port from device to device. It's like having an invisible music collection.

A while back I decided to convert my entire music collection to MP3 format. It used to take up shelves of storage space now it just resides on y PC's hard drive. It's easier and more convenient. Instead of looking for a CD then inserting it and playing it I just browse my collection, find the track I want to play and play it using a PC media player.

It is not just in the home that the power of computing is making a real difference. Business is certainly seeing the result of the computing age. Now it would be difficult to find many businesses big or small that do not use computing in some way. It could be anything from printing invoices to storing client data. The power of computing has certainly made businesses a lot more productive. The contents of 1000 filling cabinets could easily be stored on an average PC.

There are downsides to this but the benefits far outweigh the cons. One area where the growth in computer usage has had a negative impact is job losses. For example it is almost certain that the rapid growth in digital photography has had a very bad impact on the photography industry. Jobs that would have once been carried out by staff on photo development labs are now being done by the person who owns the camera on his/her own PC.

The music store industry must also be suffering. If people can simply go online and buy music why go into town to buy a physical copy. There are lots of ups and downs to this debate but like it or not the power of computing has changed the world for good. There is still a lot to change and a lot more potential to be had from computing in general.

As computing becomes more and more popular so will the transfer of commerce from the real world to the digital world. Computers make things easy. They deliver us with tools to make our lives more fun, more productive and empowered. One wonders where will these end.

--www.digital-assistant.net

Net innovation gets squeezed

Beyond today's layoff news and this year's shrinking network budgets, the ongoing economic turmoil could have a long term impact on the lifeblood of the technology industry, innovation.

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan

Beyond today's layoff news and this year's shrinking network budgets, the ongoing economic turmoil could have a long term impact on the lifeblood of the technology industry, innovation.

After all, layoffs, research and development cutbacks, and a lack of start-up companies mean fewer people are working to solve network problems, and fewer ideas will ever see the light of day. On the other hand, observers say what is really emerging is a more Darwinian environment than we have had in recent years, where only the strong ideas survive.

"We were in an era where almost any idea could get funding," says Bill Leighton, Vice President of network and services development at AT&T Labs. "So many new ideas were generated, and people had to spend a lot of time sorting them out."

This, the final part of Network World's series about the economy's effects on the industry, focuses on how innovators plan to make the most of a bad situation.

"It's inevitable that we'll go forward . . . with technologies like wireless Internet, optical and mass-market broadband," says Larry Smarr, Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2). "People won't stop innovating, but it's going to be short rations for a while."

That's partly because private investment in network start ups a major engine of innovation - evaporated this year. The second quarter reported the lowest amount of seed and first-round financing deals in the industry since 1998, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' MoneyTree survey. The survey lists 116 seed- and first-round deals in the second quarter, down 80 percent from the peak in the first quarter of 2000. At $688 million, the total financing in the spring of this year was one-tenth the amount spent in early 2000.

Acquisitions of start ups are also down. For example, Cisco, which gained a reputation for acquiring innovation rather than developing it in-house - bought just one company in the first half of this year, compared with more than 20 last year. And IPOs have plummeted in the technology sector, from more than 300 in each of the last two years to just 10 in the first half this year, according to the website IPO Monitor.

For corporate buyers, this trend means start-ups will take longer to deliver products because they will have less money to spend on people-intensive development efforts. However, start-ups that deliver products should be healthier because venture capitalists are doing more due diligence before making investments.

"You will see stronger businesses because companies won't get funding unless they have a compelling business plan and a revenue model that shows they can make it," says Tracy Lefteroff, global managing partner of the venture capital practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Video games . . . not all bad

Video games are not really all bad rather playing them improves manual dexterity among surgeons, making them faster and less likely to make mistakes

Playing video games improves manual dexterity among surgeons, making them faster and less likely to make mistakes, US researchers have said. The findings were contained in a raft of research about how video games affect the people who play them, discussed at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston.

"The big picture is that there are several dimensions in which games have effects," including their content, how they are played, and how much, said psychologist Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University.

"This means that games are not 'good' or 'bad' but are powerful educational tools and have many effects we might not have expected they could."

Gentile presented several studies on video games including one involving 33 surgeons specialising in laparoscopy, the use of a thin lighted tube to inspect and treat various conditions in the pelvic and abdominal cavities.

Laparoscopic surgeons who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures, and made 37 percent fewer errors, compared to their non-gaming colleagues, the study found.

Studies involving high school and college students confirmed previous findings about the social effects of playing violent video games, the Iowa State researchers said.

Students who played violent games were more hostile, less forgiving, and more apt to view violence as normal, than peers who played non-violent games. But students who played pro social games got into fewer fights at school and were more helpful to other students, the researchers reported.

Yet another study, at Fordham University, measured the effect of learning a new video game on problem-solving skills in middle school age children and found that "playing video games can improve cognitive and perceptual skills."

"Certain types of video games can have beneficial effects improving gamers' dexterity as well as their ability to problem solving attributes that have proven useful not only to students but to surgeons as well," the researchers found.

--www.bbc.co.uk

TECHNOTALK
Helping the deaf to 'see sound'

Dr Mick Grierson from Goldsmith's University of London, takes sound software to deaf children. Deaf children have been testing software that enables them to see a visual representation of sound waves. The software translates sound waves into circles that radiate on a display is called Lumisonic. It creates a real time representation of sound and is designed to elicit responses quickly in the human brain. "If I make a sound and lower the pitch, the rings contract," said Dr Grierson. Lumisonic can respond to computer generated noises or those from a microphone. When deaf children tested Lumisonic, they began experimenting by singing and clapping within a few minutes.

Spending on communications falls

Every day in 2007, the average consumer spent seven hours and nine minutes watching TV, on the phone, using the internet or using other services, Ofcom report says. Since 2002, mobile use has doubled and PC and laptop use has grown fourfold, says the watchdog's annual review. TV remains the most popular pastime, with the average person watching for three hours and 38 minutes a day last year. In 2007 the average person spent 24 minutes per day on their computer and 10 minutes using their mobile. There are also spending more time on the phone than ever before, with a 21 percent increase in minutes spent on mobile calls.

Rat-brain robot aids memory study

Dr Ben Whalley, from the University of Reading has carried out tests on the 'rat brain controlled' robot. A robot controlled by a blob of rat brain cells could provide insights into diseases such as Alzheimer's, University of Reading scientists say. The project marries 300,000 rat neurons to a robot that navigates via sonar. The neurons are now being taught to steer the robot around obstacles and avoid the walls of the small pen in which it is kept. The blob of nerves forming the brain of the robot takes from the neural cortex in a rat foetus and then treated to dissolve the connections between individual neurons