The reason I love tech

[Freefaller]

Connecting to my VPN at home, and browsing my home server from my phone whilst walking around in town. That's pretty phenomenal.

I still am impressed with mobile phones. Walking around in the USA speaking to my father in Cyprus doing the same. It was quite staggering to think of what's happening to make that work.

About 8 years ago I sailed across the atlantic, and had a femtocell onboard, which was connected via satellite - it meant that my phone had a mobile phone signal in the middle of the ocean, and I received a text, and had to make a call - it cost a lot, but it was totally worth it.

Then of course there are all medical advances etc... But in day to day life there is so much that happens thanks to technology that we just don't realise.

 

[FloppyPoppy]

It just took me 5 minutes to save an excel file using this Vista piece of crap at work.

I did a disc write/read test for our server where we keep our excel files ect.

a whopping 6mb's/0.3mb's

They get annoyed when i store things locally now.

 

[oxygene]

One thing that did amaze me was my parents internet running at 152mbit. this works out in practice about 14 megabytes a second. I made a joke on facebook that I image it as someone throwing a 10 pack of floppy disks at me every second so I can visualize it. Then I realized thats not far off the truth. Considering how much I used to use floppies for and how long it took them to be read, the thought of 10 of those being transferred every second still humbles me.

 

[mrk]

+1 on the Galaxy S2! I've had smartphones as far back as 2005, they were called PDA phones back then. Sony-Ericsson mostly. Granted, these things did impress me, but with the S2 in 2011, there was no turning back

Other "wow" moments:

- having my first Windows PC in 1999. Getting online for the first time, discovering manga. Learning how to reformat, modify Windows, shell replacements, Sega Megadrive emulation and so on. Sega Megadrive bit probably wasn't legal, but who cares?

- having a chess computer in 1993, but also, being able to play chess on an Android phone in recent years due to the device's compact nature.

- I'm quite obsessed with cameras, so having my first 35mm in 1993 and my first bridge digicam in 2004 were both monumental monents for me.

- Sony Discman in 1995! (it was the present from my parents for doing well in GCSEs).

I suppose if we're speaking of wow moments then it probably was/is at work, it wowed my boss more than me I guess as I knew it was something I could do with the phone but I was talking to the boss about an issue and needed to log on to a server. I loaded up an RDP app on my phone and did the task there and then.

Another time I needed to copy a file from one network location to another so I used ES File Explorer to scan network shares (I didn't know the IP/hostname off the top of my head), browsed into it with my domain admin logon and copy pasted the file from one window to the other (you can have multiple windows open in the app just like in Windows).

Having a full blown "computer" in the palm of your hand with so much power is amazing.


Edit*
Oh yeah more phone related coolness, visiting someone and wanted to show them some videos and photos on my phone. Rather than huddle around the phone screen I beamed the media to their living room TV over their WiFi, the same connection would even control their TV playback settings. NO need for a special app, no need for dongles, it just works.

 

[Casdawer]

Latest one is using Kinect on Xbox One.

Having the ability to just talk to it and it understands what I want it to do.

 

[oxygene]

Latest one is using Kinect on Xbox One.

Having the ability to just talk to it and it understands what I want it to do.

See I've never been too fussed about talking to my computer to get it to do things.
Just never appealed to me!

 

[Cosimo]

Latest one is using Kinect on Xbox One.

Having the ability to just talk to it and it understands what I want it to do.

I used to get excited by using voice control in my car when it first came out, now I can do it to a remote control.

 

[robj20]

First wow moment for me was Mini Discs, so small and i can record to it.
Next the smartphone really are great bits of kit, emails on the go being the big plus.

 

[Guest2]

Connecting to my VPN at home, and browsing my home server from my phone whilst walking around in town. That's pretty phenomenal.

I still am impressed with mobile phones. Walking around in the USA speaking to my father in Cyprus doing the same. It was quite staggering to think of what's happening to make that work.

Yes, people take granted the technology that is used sometimes when they don't see or understand it.

Take me for example, I work from home. Fire up my 4G hotspot on my phone and connect my computer to it. I then browse and login to my work Citrix access gateway (more reliable than VPN) which sits on a dmz, once past encryption (2 factor so a radius server) and certificates, the connection then goes through to a Netscaler and Web interface where I open a connection to my PC at work that has remote PC client installed on Xen Desktop infrastructure, or I could open a desktop session in XenaApp and RDP my machine. I get apps on my work PC from XenApp (multiple farms and web interfaces) local installed and virtualised.

I can then share someones desktop in Australia / Hongkong or most places in the world who are also at home or not -some work from iPads/mobile devices on the move, aeroplanes or practically anywhere. People can also login to an internal application store via storefront and get mobile document management applications and many other mobile apps for their phones - all whist I troubleshoot the backend infrastructure.

All pretty amazing once you dig into what is actually happening

People just think - are yes, he is sharing my screen from his laptop. No

My guess is that the majority of people think in offices everyone just has home PCs with a network managed by another company.

 

[:(Rhodri:)]

More than forty years ago we landed on the moon. Now "High Tech" means more convenient music. You'll excuse me if I don't cheer while I wait for my flying car.

Pffft Moon! That's so 1960's. We have a nuclear powered robot that's currently wondering around Mars on a site-seeing tour, the majority of human knowledge is constantly available at our fingertips (or voice command) and there's three or more people constantly living in orbit around the Earth. And I bet they could all stream music off spotify if they wanted to!

 

[ikillbears]

I sent a letter the other day, crazy stuff

 

[Judgeneo]

It just took me 5 minutes to save an excel file using this Vista piece of crap at work.

Some technology is crap, some mentioned in this thread are a lot simpler than made out, but some technology is truly amazing.

Brain-computer interfaces allowing disabled people to control limbs and perform basic tasks, such as feeding themselves. Thats the most impressed I've been with technology, its an incredible feat which opens up endless possibilities.

Think about it, its a computer that can read the minute changes in electrical activity in the brain, understand what we are thinking, convert that into something that is can perform computation on, then send instructions to a sophisticated robotic arm, which accurately makes precise movements to pick up and move objects back to the human who thought about it in the first place.
The cutting edge of biology and robotics bound together by am array of microscopic transistors.

 

[Cosimo]

I sent a letter the other day, crazy stuff

It's quite exciting when you pick up a pen to write a letter without the use of a spell checker.

 

[Hades]

I am constantly amazed how much has changed in my lifetime. I remember talking to my grandad when I was young and he remembered a time when cars were almost non existent. I thought he was lucky to have lived through a time of such change. but our generation has seen so much more change than he ever could.

I still remember seeing my first mobile phone. Now I can be almost anywhere in the world (within reason) and still talk instantly to almost anyone on the planet. Astonishing.

The internet is an amazing resource. Need to know something? Just look it up on my phone, again almost anywhere in the connected world.

But I now take it so much for granted that technology excites me less. Nowadays it's the real life experiences, and how awesome the human body is, rather than technological, that I find amazing. And those are on a path to merge in the not too distant future.

 

[LordSplodge]

I haven't been that impressed by technology since I programmed a game, from scratch, onto my Spectrum ZX81 in 1986.

More than forty years ago we landed on the moon. Now "High Tech" means more convenient music. You'll excuse me if I don't cheer while I wait for my flying car.

Funnily enough, I was in awe, née rapture, when I got to see an actual Saturn V. Then I got morose when I then realised mankind has given up on space and become so more self centred.

Thankfully scientific progress carries on, especially I'm medicine.

 

[Evoss]

Moore's Law

To think within 30 years, technology will have a trillion time the capability it has today!

 

[Muz333]

I'm currently doing a PhD in synthetic Biology. I think it's outstanding that we can construct artificial gene networks using a combination of components, both man made and taken from various organisms, to engineer single cell organisms to conduct a designed task.
Science has progressed an outstanding amount in the past century.

 

[Hades]

I agree it is disappointing that we haven't been back to the Moon or anywhere else since. But mankind hasn't had enough of a reason to. Once private enterprise starts space missions then I think that will change. Sadly though it will mostly be robotic.

I think it will be like most technological advances where there is an initial interest, then it dies down until a second later surge happens. e.g. the early internet, a plateau and then "Web 2.0" which has exploded in use.

 

[TrojanWhore]

Moore's Law

To think within 30 years, technology will have a trillion time the capability it has today!

Moore's law states that the amount of components we are able to fabricate on a given area of integrated circuit PCB would double approximately every 2 years, not that performance would increase in line with this. He also stated that he only expected this to be true through to around 1975.

Dennard scaling on the other hand, does indicate that performance/watt should increase in a roughly similar fashion.

also, 30 years at a base interval of 2 years, would be 2^15 times the density, which is 32,768 as opposed to 1,000,000,000,000 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 , whichever definition of a trillion you follow

 

[Evoss]

Moore's law states that the amount of components we are able to fabricate on a given area of integrated circuit PCB would double approximately every 2 years, not that performance would increase in line with this. He also stated that he only expected this to be true through to around 1975.

Dennard scaling on the other hand, does indicate that performance/watt should increase in a roughly similar fashion.

also, 30 years at a base interval of 2 years, would be 2^15 times the density, which is 32,768 as opposed to 1,000,000,000,000 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 , whichever definition of a trillion you follow

Yes, I am fully aware that originally that the law is regarding the number of transistor we can integrate onto a PCB.

Now... what powers most devices, servers, everything that is made within our world? Thats correct the CPU.

Apologies the number I said should have been a billion, however, what is two to the power of 30? = 1,073,741,824.

Therefore, the the amount of transistors we can fit on a PCB in 30 years time will be 1,073,741,824 greater. All that extra power = a lot more technology.

Thanks