GallMedia |
- Technology Dependency: Living in the Age of the Glowing Screens
- How to Sell Electronics On ebay with no Start up Money
- Cooling Platforms For Your Laptops
- The GPS Phone – No Hassle Travel
- Best Tips to Make a Laptop Run Cooler
| Technology Dependency: Living in the Age of the Glowing Screens Posted: 28 Jul 2011 01:18 PM PDT How dependent are we on technology? Are we really aware of how much time we spend in front of the glowing screens of our cell phones, computers, and televisions?
As our daily activities become increasingly augmented by technology and entertainment media, we are compelled take a step back and assess our choices. What role does entertainment technology play in our lives? How much time will we choose to spend online, on our cell-phone, or watching television? Are we aware and conscious enough to make decisions about how we relate to these media? Beneath these questions is the more fundamental one: Do our values regarding entertainment really match up with the amount of time we dedicate to being entertained? * On a personal note, I don't believe that watching television is bad or that surfing the internet is "wrong" or wasteful. We've got to do something with our time. And we might as well have some fun. I believe, in my heart, that fun is good. You can quote me on that. I do get afraid sometimes though. I fear losing control of my own decisions and letting questionable habits drive me toward what is always easier – and less rewarding than pursuits that require more effort and thought. Here, the term for fun in Spanish comes to mind: divertido: fun as diverting: fun as diversion. It's an easy connection to make. It's also easy to see entertainment technology as diversion. Diversion from what? I don't know. Don't ask me. But don't you ever feel distracted while watching television? Don't you find yourself wondering what it was you were just thinking about before the commercial, before the webpage loaded? Our attention is being diverted from itself, somehow. It no longer holds together. I don't want to wake up in twenty years and ask myself, "What was I doing again?" and have no answer. There is a need then to come to grips with a decision about what role I will allow entertainment to play in my life, which is the flip-side of the coin determining what role my mind will play in my life. Entertainment is a must. This is America! And I am an American through and through. Maybe that's why I worry about myself falling into the "vast cultural wasteland" that seems to gape at the doorstep with ever greater gravity, ubiquity, and promise. What follows here is not a moral argument. What follows is not an argument at all, but a reflection on the speed and nature of the ongoing cultural shift in America focusing especially on the most prolific and impacting technologies of entertainment that have been incorporated into our daily routines over the recent decades. (Consider the italicized sections as contextual asides.) * At the time of the first Apollo space missions, computers were in the earliest stages of development and were so large as to fill large rooms. A pocket-sized cell phone today has more computing power than one of those room-sized machines and nearly everyone has one. * Things change. I grew up in the 80's and 90's, graduating high school in 1998 in the Midwest. Things were different back then. With great regularity we talk about how the world is changing, at least here in America, and how rapid the changes have become. We are constantly reminded of the changes taking place, but we have stopped envisioning the future. From one week to the next there is a new big news story – no longer do stories continue to be told for more than a few days. The phrase "short attention span" rings in our ears. Every year brings another leap in technology and yet another technological fad. Once there was MySpace and now there is Facebook. What's next? From Wii to what? Where is our Jules Verne? Who can see what is coming now? We ask what's next and have no idea what shape the answer will take. * When I was a boy, the first in-home video game system was released: The Atari. Less than ten years later a chain of inspirations would begin – Nintendo would inspire Sega would inspire Play Station would inspire X-Box would inspire Wii and a multi-billion dollar per year games industry. * The White House is promoting plans for high speed rails all across the country. The New York Times recently published an article about sending men to Mars – and not bringing them back; a one way ticket to interplanetary travel. Permanent Martian vacation. Though both of these plans would take years to realize – if they were ever realized – myriad other changes in the fabric of our world culture and our local culture would take place in the mean time. I find the task of imagining that future world impossible. A world with humans on Mars and the USA crisscrossed by high-speed trains. Oddly, this does not feel like a futuristic situation. It feels like science-fiction from one hundred years ago. Europe and Asia already have high-speed trains. Space travel has long been focused on the international space station and meta-space-travel via super-high-resolution deep-space telescopes. * When I was a boy, even the humongous car-phones didn't exist. It wasn't until the mid-nineties that portable phones became practical. Ten years later, more than 25% of America would have cell phone. Now, a considerable percentage of Americans don't even have land-line phone service. * Of course, traveling to Mars is not a step backwards. Many Americans have a romance with trains too and already adore the idea of streaking through the country-side, wine glass in hand, watching the world flash by, imagining the sounds the cows make, their mouths half-full of the tall grass of Wyoming lowing in their pasture while the glass and steel of the train carries the dreamers on and on… But, what will be the state of our culture in five years? Ten years? Practically speaking, our culture and our country will be much as it is now. Changes in infrastructure and space-travel aside, we will still speak English, eat fast food, and watch huge amounts of television. Within each of these areas changes will happen. New words will be introduced to the language and the dictionary will grow. Foods will be altered, genetically and categorically. Perhaps we will witness the rise of the fast-food mashed potato, or the emergence of tofu fries. Cable television will continue its rapid evolution into the "vast wasteland" it has always promised to be – but the picture will be more vivid and clear than real life! * When I was a boy, music was played on audio cassettes, movies were played on video cassettes and personal computers did not exist. By the time I graduated high school, cassettes had been replaced by discs and a vast majority of middle-class homes owned computers and had begun plugging them in to the world wide web. * Perhaps pointing to fast food and television seems silly. Are these really the markers of our culture? Can we say, with any weight, that changes in television will create changes in our day to day lives? I would answer these questions with this thought: culture is a mixture of elements, from etiquette to cuisine to habits and values. Nearly everything counts. We might say that culture is cumulative. The truth of the cumulative idea should be apparent when we envision a single day in our lives. I'll use myself as an example. An alarm on my cell phone wakes me up. I shave, shower, and dress. I drive my car to work, where I punch in a code to turn off an alarm system that is electronically tied in to the local sheriff station as well as the alarm company's central nervous system. After a while, I sit down to check accounts on a computer, spending time gazing into this glowing screen intermittently throughout the day, often using at least an hour of my time in this posture of staring into the computer's glow. Later I will text message my girlfriend, spending time gazing into the glowing screen of my cell phone. At the end of the day, I return home and read. I cook dinner on a gas stove then put in a movie and gaze at the glowing screen of a television. Then I read again and sleep. Over the course of this day – where I have done work, really, somewhere in there – many of my activities are either directly involved with technology or augmented by it. My morning ablutions, my reading and my cooking are all relatively ancient activities. I could have performed these functions fifty years ago in exactly the same way that I do |
| How to Sell Electronics On ebay with no Start up Money Posted: 28 Jul 2011 10:17 AM PDT Array |
| Cooling Platforms For Your Laptops Posted: 28 Jul 2011 07:17 AM PDT Free laptop computer computers these as the Apple MacPro or the Toshiba Satellite series use motherboards and interior cards that produce a good deal of warmth. If you use your laptop an hour or so at a time, this is not a massive issue. But, if you use your no cost laptop for 3 or more hours at a time, and you sit it on your lap, you are most probably likely to finish up burning your lap, and maybe damaging your laptop computer. Your free of charge laptop laptop or computer arrives with a cooling technique, but about time the laptop will turn out to be hotter and hotter. Your laptop computer was not designed to be employed for hours on stop, and the cooling program was built to be successful only for brief intervals of time. Your pc requirements air to circulate your laptop to cool it down. Sitting your free of charge laptop on a flat area these as a bench, desk, or lap prevents air from revealing the warmth on the base of the laptop computer. This effect heats up your laptop even much more as you use it. Straightforward and value effective options for this issue are cooling platforms for laptops. These platforms come with constructed in fans to present extra cooling for your laptops. These cooling platforms for laptops generally come slanted like a book tray and are covered with a area that will help your totally free laptop personal computer adhere temporarily to its area. The cooling platform is open up in the middle to let warmth to be transferred to the air and away from your program. The followers of the cooling platform also help neat your laptop or computer down. A cooling platform for laptops can be acquired commencing at about . Most of your cooling platforms are powered by plugging them into one particular of your laptop’s USB ports. Some well-liked cooling platforms for free of charge laptops are Targas Chill Mat AWE55US. This platform costs about and can handle a no cost laptop up to 17 inches in width. One more selection is the Zalman ZM-NC2000 Notebook Cooler. This cooling platform is a tiny a lot more pricey at , but is constructed out of a large grade aluminum and is one of the thinnest coolers. The two of these attributes make it a great platform cooler for traveling. It also emits blue LED light when it is employed. There are cooling platforms offered for underneath . These platforms have fan models that are only closed on one particular aspect. This stops them from getting utilised on nearly anything with cloth or on your lap because the fan with reduce you or the cloth. If you want this form of cooling platform for your no cost laptop personal computer, some alternatives are the Moveable Neat Life or the Syba SY-NBK68002 platforms. If you would like your cooling platform without enthusiasts, even even though most of the followers are quite tranquil, these are offered. Nonetheless, the cooling platforms with out supporters will not awesome down your laptop computer as significantly as these with supporters. If you want this alternative, cooling platforms you may possibly search at are ThemaPak Laptop computer Cooling Heatshift Pad which utilizes cooling crystals instead of fans, or the Xpad Slim NonSlip Laptop computer Cooler and Heat Shield. The ThermaPak retails for about and the Xpad retails for about . The a lot less warmth your free laptop computer pc generates, the longer it will last you. Cooling platforms for laptops lengthen this lifestyle at a cheap price. |
| The GPS Phone – No Hassle Travel Posted: 28 Jul 2011 04:19 AM PDT GPS phones are an amazing idea that makes it possible for folks numerous positive aspects. One particular constructive factor is the potential to get directions to where ever before you want to go. Not only can you just get directions you can get action by phase directions that can get you there and check you intently until finally you reach your final location. There have almost certainly been details in your existence where you have been lost in your automobile. And you probably did what most folks do and drove about hoping to see something acquainted or that you would get again on track by some means. For most men and women the notion of stopping and asking somebody for instructions is inconvenient as not only do you have to locate a location to stop, you have to desire the particular person provides you accurate directions, and all of that may possibly be equally unappealing if you have little ones in the vehicle. Having GPS on your cell phone can change all of that. By way of Moto and TeleNav equally provide place based solutions. They can get you driving directions that will get you proper to the entrance door of your location. If you are searching for a restaurant or a school, you just kind in the handle and wait for additional directions. You will acquire very certain directions that will navigate you via your travels. They also offer a support that will give you back up instructions. So if you`re driving alongside and you make a improper turn or you pass up a flip, your GPS telephone will basically give you a route to just take you back to your genuine route. It will also give you re-routing recommendations if there is building or a auto incident up forward. These features allow you to stay centered on driving and elevate the pressure that can arrive with driving and obtaining new locations. GPS cell phones operate in two approaches subscription and software. When you subscribe to a company for GPS services you will have to have a second GPS receiver that normally sits on your auto dash board. It connects by way of a wire or can be wireless. When you use the subscription software you have to pay out a firm a month to month price. The charge might be month-to-month or every couple of months and you may well have to indicator a agreement that locks you in for a certain quantity of time. And costs variety in price and may boost based on how usually it is utilized. If you go with the software package package deal, you can have it place right on to your telephone as an added plan. In this scenario there is no contract to sign or regular monthly fees to shell out for. If you`re seeking for a GPS cell cellphone that can give you directions although you`re on foot, you may well be out of luck unless you stay in Europe. There you can purchase a Nokia cellphone that has an extra accessory to make it a hand held GPS. It will present a route program, TomTom, metropolis maps and GPS antenna. A hand held GPS is fantastic for travelers on foot strolling through foreign metropolitan areas or hiking in the woods. Ideally this service gets to be available for vacationers external of Europe. If you can swing the additional price that arrives with buying the computer software or don`t mind subscribing to GPS, then it may be a great thing to have. There are several perks to it and even if it not employed often, there will most surely be a time exactly where it will be necessary. You can have entry to posts about cell phones in Portuguese language from page PoloMercantil |
| Best Tips to Make a Laptop Run Cooler Posted: 28 Jul 2011 01:19 AM PDT Laptops and Notepads do make heat, sometimes adequate to do hurt, it wants a laptop computer cooler to preserve the heat away! Handle your laptop computer temperature by utilizing laptop computer cooling equipment. See your choices for enhancing laptop computer temperature with laptop cooling. The heat can shorten the lifestyle of the electronics, and it can be uncomfortable for the consumer balancing a laptop computer on his or her lap. A simple way to quit laptop computer overheating issues is by making use of a laptop computer cooler, many are really cheap and perform effectively, a cooler laptop computer is not only much more trustworthy, but will truly operate faster, get a laptop computer cooler today. It is one of the best requirements of nearly each occupation all those who are working in unfavorable problems could fret about their laptops since of the encompassing situations. The signs and symptoms of an overheating Pc are a lot of. Corrupt graphics, crashing applications, blue-screens, and lock-ups can all be the consequence of overheating parts. Several laptops overheat since the fan on the bottom is blocked, and the tough generate then rapidly fails. So comply with down below methods to make your laptop computer operate cooler. How to make a Laptop computer Operate Cooler? When sitting at your desk, set a modest guide or merchandise under your computer's battery. This slight suggestion permits a good deal much more air to movement below the laptop, holding it substantially cooler. Advantages of operate cooler Less crashes Source : B4tea.com |
| You are subscribed to email updates from GallMedia To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 komentar:
Post a Comment