The Last Byte of Awesome

The purpose of our blog over this past semester was to spark awareness of our technology-based society. Sometimes it seems that we don’t outright recognize change as “change”, we just adapt without thinking and move on. By taking the time to research an innovation or event, understand its meaning, and assemble it in the big picture we gain a better idea of its significance. We have posted on a wide array of topics these past few months, this variability allowed us to explore and unveil niches of the tech world that are not always at the forefront.

We hope that you enjoyed this series of blog postings, we welcomed the opportunity to gather and report new information as we encountered it.

We thank you, our readers, for taking the time to hear our thoughts. We believe the world is made up of billions of opinions, and each one is just as important as the last. Never stop the pursuit of innovation.

Have a wonderful holiday season!
 
Andrew, Brady, Scott

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“Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

-Steve Jobs

The Amazon Echo

And out of nowhere Amazon comes in with the ‘Echo’. The Amazon Echo is the ideal virtual companion. The Echo uses cloud technology to give you up-to-date information within a reasonable distance. A unique characteristic is that you can place this device anywhere in the room and it is always listening for your voice. You just have to set a keyword for it to act on your following sentence. The Echo can provide you with information, music, news, weather, and much more.

This may sound just like another version of Siri or Google Now but it isn’t. This deivce can be placed anywhere throughout your home and can be used in many different ways. The Echo includes a 360-degree speaker, for example, along with a 2.5-inch subwoofer. This can play music throughout the entire room evenly whenever you desire. You also don’t have to turn anything on or push any buttons. You simply blur out the keyword you have chosen and it’s listening just like that.

This may not be a very grounding-breaking device but it is solidifying the use of automated products. Cars are using voice technology to communicate with the driver as well as phones using voice-to-text features. The interactions and communication between humans and technology is becoming so close and seamless that you can almost develop a personal relationship with a device such as the Echo. The Amazon Echo is "shipping in the coming weeks" and is only available on an invite-only basis. Also for a limited time, Amazon is offering users half off their purchase if the are an Amazon Prime user. 

-Brady Feldman (Extra Credit)

Net Neutrality

Today The White House released a statement on Net Neutrality explaining what President Obama’s view on the issue is and what he believes should be done.  While Obama has no direct influence on the matter (that belongs to the FCC) his words carry a great amount of weight and will certainly be heeded by the FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler.        

In his statement Obama explained that the internet is becoming an ever important resource to Americans and should be widely available to everyone in this country. He then continued to compare the internet to other resources like water or electricity which are regulated by the government as public utilities. His plan is to reclassify Internet Service Providers (ISPs) under Title II of the telecommunications act which would put ISPs like Comcast or Verizon on the same field as landline telephone providers.

The whole reason for this is to prevent a company like Comcast from abusing its power. With no regulation nothing is stopping Comcast from crippling a service like Netflix for all of its customers in order to get them to drop it and move to Hulu if Hulu paid them to do that. Now nothing like that is currently happening, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried about it. Normally that would just be the free market at work and Netflix would have to adapt their strategy or customers could simply choose a different ISP in order to access the service, but in many regions of the country there is one, maybe two or three ISPs to choose from. The capital needed to lay fiber in a city is astronomical, so companies that offered to lay down the cost in order to have exclusive rights to a certain market now have the luxury of being in a government sponsored monopoly (much like utilities)

While it would be nice if things just kept chugging along like they currently are without government regulation, it doesn’t look like it is going to happen that way. We already hear of companies wanting to create so called “fast lanes” that would allow services to pay for increased bandwidth or speeds. Another example is T-mobile. On T-mobiles network certain music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify do not count towards your monthly data cap. While this seems like it might be a win for consumers and companies alike, what happens when a small start up that has a killer service doesn’t get that agreement with T-mobile? Consumers will be less apt to use that smaller service because it just isn't in their best interest. 

--Scott Evans

Why Flying Cars Are Still In The Horizon

As humans we know how to make a plane. We also know how to make a car. It seems that with all of the technological advancements in our world we would be able to combine these two and make a flying car. Well this concept has been at our horizon of development for many years now and is yet to pleasure many futurists. 

If you went back in time and asked somebody in the 1960's what vehicle transportation would look like today I would bet that they would be moderately disappointed. The 21st century unveiled many new technologies but none of them have been an effective flying car and I will tell you why. 

What comes to mind when you try to reason the concept of a flying vehicle? Besides that fact that it would be extremely cool, it would provide an efficient method of traveling to a given destination by using a direct route. However there is a long list of reasons why this hasn't happened yet and some of them I will touch in this post. 

First of all, the technology required to build this kind of machine that can just take off and land anywhere is going to make the product cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. With that only reaching a small percentage of the consumer market share, there is no drive to develop an infrastructure, which is my next point. Just like there being an infrastructure of roads, highways, and intersections for ground vehicles, there would need to be at least an enforced set of rules, procedures, routes, etc. Without any of that it would be total chaos. Just imagine the hectic rush hour of any major city in the nation. Now picture that without the many years of developed infrastructure and enforcement of laws, procedures, practices, etc. 

With that being said I do think that there is one way that would allow flying vehicles to appear in our lifetimes and that would be with self-flying machines. I hesitate to call them vehicles because it would act more like a machine than what we know now as a vehicle. This machine would ask for the destination and then be able to communicate with every other flying object near them to avoid crashes. The "driver" would not be in charge of controlling any part of the machine while in transit. While some of this technology is starting to emerge with newer cars today, it has a good distance to go to be sufficient in this scenario. 

I love the thought of flying cars but, in all honesty, we won't be seeing them as soon as we like. There are many things that need to happen before we see "cars" flying around but when that day arrives, it shall be great.

-Brady Feldman