Technology and Me

Looking back, I think that I’ve never been a person with a particular fear of technology. Sure, we had our differences and misunderstandings – there were times when I was not far away from smashing my stupid something against the next best wall, but then again there were times when my technology and I lived in perfect harmony. You see, my feelings for technology fluctuated somewhere between a happy and an angry face – never reaching the level of horror as seen at Eduard Munch’s “The Scream”, though.

And as far as I can remember – I knew that technology was fun. Basically, because I knew that TV was my friend (since it showed ‘Tom and Jerry’ and other neat stuff on Saturday mornings) and because I knew no better purpose for my dad’s PC then to play ‘Lemmings’ on it. With passing years my collection of useful technology grew:  I had several video game consoles, a few digital cameras (I passionately lose whenever I get the chance to), and a little assortment of ‘handheld magic’, called cellphones. There were different shades of emotions I went through while growing up with technology, but even on the day, that I’ve lost every file that was saved on the hard drive of my first PC (because of some viruses that tricked my firewall and my anti-virus software), I have not felt terror.

Feeling respect for technology (for being a worthy opponent) – that was ‘das Höchste der Gefühle’, as Germans say, for me.

Consequently there was not much ‘fear’ to overcome with a little help from Bruce. However by being a good girl (aka doing the boring blog-homework-stuff) I learned something that’s as natural and important as the use of technology for human beings: The use of language.

The usefulness of using technology!

Half a year after finishing „Introduction to Business Information Systems“, which was quite a pain to me, I am now reaching the end of another rather technological course, “Business Application Systems”. As I said already, BIS did not arouse my passion for any activities dealing with PCs really, hence I was not looking forward to BusApps.

To be honest, I did not fall in love with technology this time either but I cannot deny I learned some very important, useful and frequently applicable skills in this course. Furthermore, I must emphasize it succeeded in demystifying cyberspace to a certain extent, which I had not expected prior to the sessions.

To depict how my development in regards to IT occurred, I ask you to listen to the story of my ascent along my learning curve up to my personal “knowledge plateau”!;)

Say Bye Bye To My Fear Of Technology

We live in the era of technology. Who can imagine their life without mobile phone or computer? I guess the answer would be: “Nobody”. However, we need also to know how to use technologies otherwise they, that are created to make our lives easier, are useless.

I belong to people who have a fear of technology. Everything what is connected to computer such as new applications or installations makes me immediately scared. In the same time I realized that it can’t last forever because if I don’t install a useful add or the program it can happen that, for example, all the data will be lost.

This is the reason why I decided to solve the problem with advertisings and banners that appear on my screen all the time and annoy me. In order to find solution I checked add-ons for Firefox, the browser I use. As we can see, Adblock Plus  has the highest rating and many good references. It was written that this add-on gives you control of the internet and customizes your filters. That is why I chose it.

I installed Adblock and restarted Mozilla Firefox. However, nothing happened. Then I restarted it again and again but it didn’t give any result. Usually, I felt myself helpless and gave it up. But not today. As Professor Bruce taught us, I asked Google. It helped me to find this video where you can find detailed explanation of the installation process and a link to the web-site with useful information.

After Adblock was installed on my computer, I chose a filter subscription “Easy list”. When I open my favorite Facebook the next time, I could click the right button, press “Block the image” and then “Add filter”. After that this advertising or image is blocked and won’t appear on your screen anymore.

It was my first small victory. I found out that if you don’t give up immediately and if you know where and how to search, there will be no problems anymore. I am looking forward to continue with fighting against my technology fear.

Say “Bye Bye” To My Fear of Technology – Cascading Style Sheets

After nine weeks of blogging, here comes the final post giving you a last insight on information technology in a business world. At this time I am going to talk technological, more than ever. You might wonder about the incentives I as a female have by wanting to write about such dry, male- dominant field of study. It has a simple answer: The actual aim of this blog post is to overcome my personal fear of technology or as they say: “Don’t fear technology. It can be turned OFF!”

So why not simply jump into the pool full of data, commands, and web complexity. The first information I came across while cyber diving was the WebWork PowerPoint provided by my professor Dr. Bruce. It basically was an introduction to various topics such as databases, templates, and plug- inns. If having to write about something complicated, I was more than happy to have the possibility to choose. And if so, why not choosing something I feel quite comfortable with – Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)! In general, CSS is a powerful web tool used to describe the formatting of a document written in a markup language (HTML, XML), or as Philipp Lenssen in a Quick Guide to Web Development summarizes: “CSS are the way to layout a page“!

For some of you, it is already clear what is meant by it. For those who do not: this is my attempt of breaking it down into simple terms.

Read the Reader

After many weeks of exploring and getting to know the web, technology and IT in more detail than ever before, one major drawback or the thing that annoyed me the most, was the fact that I always had to keep track of the websites and blogs I was looking at, additionaly I sometimes failed to keep those in mind that could have been interesting to follow in the future. Soon i realized that there was (of course) something, that could solve all my problems, therefore I would like to introduce to you- the Google Reader.

Say Bye Bye To My Fear of Technology

Technology is all around us nowadays. If you think about it we do not go anywhere without our laptops or smart phones because we are afraid of losing the connection with the world. But why people became addicted to technology? I think the answer to this question is quite obvious. People became addicted simply because first – technology is widely used by great amount of people all over the world, there are no borders for it; second – technology can really make our lives easier. For example, thanks to VoiP programs such as Skype, we can cheaply get in touch with our families, living two thousand kilometers from us, which certainly is the case with me.