Tag Archives: youtube

The Innovator

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What do you think of when you hear the word “innovate” or referring to someone as an “innovator”?

For me, when I hear the word “innovate” I think of old robotics jokes where we would go around scouting other robots to learn of (i.e. “innovate”) new ideas off of them. When I hear someone being referred to as an innovator I am reminded of specific people I know such as Austin Meyers of X-Plane and Patrick O’Keefe of the iFroggy Network. I relate this characteristic people to doing something different, being good at it.

Just to see what the actual definition of the word “innovate” is, I looked it up online at dictionary.com.

The definition of “innovate” is:

to introduce something new; make changes in anything established.

From this definition we can see that an innovator is someone who innovates, i.e. they introduce something new into the world never seen before. In Born Digital, the author lists several famous innovators over the years such as Mark Zuckerberg (creator of Facebook), Shawn Fanning (creator of Napster), and Chad Hurley (creator of YouTube). The book also lists a few teen innovators who I did not know who had created small companies that generated profit.

A common trend which you may notice from those that I have stated is that all the innovators above have created a profit-inducing innovation. The thing about innovators is that they can be anybody who introduces something new.

An example of this is Patrick O’Keefe. Whilst I do not believe anyone has ever labeled Patrick as an innovator, as I see him, he is an innovator. Now you may be asking – who is Patrick O’Keefe and why does Mr. Tanner think of him as an innovator? What Patrick does is hard to put into a short group of words, but one could describe him as a guru of community driven websites. Patrick started getting into the business of running communities at an early age (~15 if I have done my calculations correctly) and since then he has gotten very successful at it running multiple forum communities, written a book, and has spoken at many conferences and panels (he’s attending Podcamp Topeka this weekend). If you want to read more about Patrick you can do so here.

What I am getting at about Patrick is that he has come up with new ideas on how to run a community. I’m not just saying that because he has run communities for ten plus years, but because I had a chance a few years ago to be on the moderator team on one of his forums and I got to see how exactly things were done on his community. I even blogged about how good Patrick ran his communities (link is to Patrick blogging about my blog, I no longer have the actual blog entry :( ).

To me, being an innovator is not always about becoming a large, million user company, but to make a difference in the way things are run as the definition from dictionary.com said. Not everyone in society thinks to consider the small changes in the way things are run by those who are not millionaires. Changes can be made by anyone.

Wrapping things up – it is not easy to be an innovator. I’m sure Patrick or any of the other innovators in the world such as Mark Zuckerburg could tell you so. I saw a tweet by Mental Floss that kind of sums things up about being new and being an innovator:

When Nolan Bushnell first took Pong to a toy show, he didn’t sell a single game. (“Innovation is hard,” he said.)

Earth From Above

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I found this video in my RSS feeds for Gizmodo which has quite an affect on me. Never do you ever really see the Earth rotating around this fast. Usually you just see a short shot or even a long shot in the movies really where the Earth just kind of sits there. Not terribly exciting or as fascinating as this is.

Its funny how much of the big picture we lose sight of each day. And not just the big picture as in your life big picture, more like the literally BIG picture. Kind of makes you feel lonely with the urge to be an astronaut…

If you want to see the rest of the videos much like the one above, click the source link below.

Source: Gizmodo

Ancient Technology with Modern Kids

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In the study in my ENGL 1101 of Digital Natives, the main focus is how my generation and future generations are digital natives. They know how to use any device with a transistor, know how to surf Facebook with their eyes closed, and they know all the little tricks to getting around the school firewall to watch YouTube videos. They know pretty much everything.

Strike that. Digital Natives know pretty much everything about today’s technology. What about yesterdays?

Well, what is considered “ancient technology” by my and today’s generation? I would define it as any technology we have little or no experience with or have never seen. To list a few, I have no memory of using a tape player, never have used a record player for it’s intended purpose, and never have used a film camera.

Being a member of my high school’s robotics team, there are tons of now ancient tools that have been made obsolete by new technology. Take the analog caliper for example – most mentors on the robotics team, because of being older than the students they mentor, are quite fond of these calipers rather than their modern day counterpart. Most if not all the tools using in mechanical drafting have not changed since they were used for drawing out isometric views. Do the students who use them know how to use them immediately as if they were born with it? No, students who use “ancient” technology are not born with the ability to use it as they can with today’s modern technology.

One of my CS 1331 TA’s, who shall remain nameless, attempted to use an overhead projector and said, “I don’t use technology older than me”. Here thereafter proceeded to blind himself with the beam of light generated by the projector.

Though the TA may have considered his statement to be that of a joke, but it is an interesting thought anyway. My generation knows less and less about the things that came before us. We have no interest in history.

To me, history of technology is a fascinating thing. Figuring out how yesteryear’s technologists and inventors found these ways to do items that we now think as never before possible without modern day precision of microchips and processors is fascinating.

One of my favorite examples of yesteryear’s fascinating technology is an old-fashion calculator called the Curta calculator from the late 1940′s. The Curta, as it was called, was a handheld device about the size of a salt/pepper shaker that would multiply, divide, add, and subtract based on the position of various pins placed along the height of the device. To calculate, one would simply rotate the top handle until the desired answer appeared. I find this simply fascinating and amazing. Doing calculations with a mechanical devices is simply something unheard of today.

Wrapping up, what are some things that you find “ancient technology” to you? How does this affect you? Do you have any desire to learn about the past of technology? Answer the questions in the comments.