brad garland

Since there hasn’t been much fanfare or any reviews talking about the iPad yet, I thought I’d start. If you didn’t find the sarcasm in that, stop reading now. I’m not interested in talking about the hardware specs, all the features, iPad apps, etc.  I’m interested in talking about the evolution of computing and technology advancement. 

I posted a quote a couple of days ago that I think is particularly relevant here by Sir Arthur Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

So, let’s talk about the magic and technology convergence through a couple of stories.

One from my buddy Brent Dixon featuring his grandfather via The Optimist:

Several ACU students attended the release event Saturday, including Drew Dixon, sophomore Biblical studies major from Sugar Land. Dixon was with several family members who traveled to Abilene for the holiday weekend. Randall Dixon, Drew’s father, and Al Dixon, his grandfather, huddled together around one of several display devices and took turns exploring.

“To an 80-year-old, it’s amazing,” Al said. “I very well might get one to have communications and information like that in any place you can think of. It’s wonderful.”

And another from the younger side of the age spectrum that has been trickling around the Interwebs the past few days where a 2.5 year old experiences the iPad for the first time:

To me, the iPad is no longer about being grouped with all the “techie” stuff. It’s removes all the setup, coding, or configuration and let’s people just play, work, or share.  So whether you’re an 80-year old male or a 2.5-year old girl, it just works and is immediately fun for you. That is magical.

Update: If you want a killer technical review, check Gruber’s review.

A Twitter for your Intranet

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A day at the pool from Brad Garland on Vimeo.

Technology gets taken for granted in any generation. Found this on Youtube and had a good laugh. Good holiday fun, happy holidays everybody.

When it’s not a digital camera, it’s just a camera…

When it’s not a cell phone, it’s just a phone…

And when you don’t call them your “Facebook/Twitter/Banktastic friends”, they’re just your friends…

That’s right, I’m a people watcher.

My wife and I both are…we enjoy going to places and just watching the types of people that are all around us and start thinking about the lives that they live completely disconnected from our own. Last week, we were both in Vegas for a conference I presented at and we could’ve people watched all day long. On the plane trip home I noticed a man and his wife sitting across from us minding their own business but check this picture out (I couldn’t resist).



Now two things are going on in this picture.

1) The Obvious - I dunno how this guy sleeps that way. I’d have a neck problem for a month!

2) The Subtle - His wife, sitting next to him. If you look closely you’ll see her writing away in her address book. This is what got my attention more than the old man. What she was doing was transcribing her addresses from her OLD address book into a NEW address book. I could see that she had contact after contact of people that she was patiently writing from one book to another. So me and all my geekery started translating this into a technology discussion.

Why would she do this? Why not put it in the computer and store it indefinitely, update it at her leisure, and not have to spend hours inputting this data ever again? WHY?!?

Since I had time to spare on the plane ride I let me mind wander. I find things like this interesting because I’m always trying to understand the gap differences between generations and why Gen X/Y’s do what we do and why Boomers/Pre-Boomers do what they do. It all relates back to me to the financial industry and why people like in the photo go into branches for every single transaction they ever do and then there are people like myself that hasn’t been IN a branch for years.

I came to the conclusion that is was a comfortability issue. She did it that way because I’m sure she’s done this same task 10-20 times before and its what she knows. Her technology of having a smaller address book is far more advanced than putting it down on an large address book binder that she couldn’t tote around with her. She keeps her little address book in her purse and knows she can go to it at any point. It has, in a way, become a security blanket for her…she relies on it to be there in her purse when she calls on it. The thought of having a cell phone with all this data probably hasn’t even crossed her mind and if it had, she probably dismissed it just as fast because it sounded too complex for her to accomplish. That statement in itself is another interesting discussion. How ‘she’ judges that as complex.

Aren’t people interesting?