Technology Gone Wild

We have a new, top-of-the-line dishwasher that has been malfunctioning. It keeps saying there's an error and it stops working.

My wife talked to the dealer who told us the answer: we must not rinse our dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Evidently the dishwasher needs to sense dirty dishes to fully function or it displays an error message. So that means we are to put the dirtiest dishes possible into the dishwasher, which goes against every fiber of my being.

Has technology gone too far??

Barry LaBov
LaBov & beyond
www.labov.com

Technology and Mediocrity

Way back in the old days, a good musician had to play rhythmically and accurately to be considered good. Then came computers. A decent software program would allow a sloppy performance to be loaded in and then be corrected so it was tight and error-free.

In the old days, a graphic artist actually drew things with a pen or pencil. The artist would use a razor blade and cut out the art work and glue it (paste it) on to their boards. Then a computer program came along that allowed the computer to draw and also to cut and paste anything.

Now, the big craze is social media. A few people are really mastering it and are making a living utilizing it. Social media will only get bigger. But technology will also continue to creep in to its space. Right now, few people are great at it. In a couple years or less, there will be scores of software programs that will do to social media what they did to music and graphic arts: it will become easier to be mediocre.

The technology doesn't make the musician or the graphic artist more creative, but it does help anyone get up to the level of mediocrity a lot easier. Social media will be the same.

Lesson: if you think you're pretty good at it today, you better keep growing and learning because technology will be nipping at your heels.


Barry LaBov
LaBov & Beyond
www.labov.com

Relationships more important than ever

Remember when the Internet started catching on and how it and the other technologies were going to change everything? Save us time and money? Well, it took a while, but things have sure changed.

But it also seemed like the Internet and computers were actually keeping us apart - less interaction, less personal communication.

As my good friend Sonya pointed out to me recently, now with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and their counterparts, we're able to be more connected with each other than ever. We can be communicating and enhancing relationships with people all over the globe 24/7.

Sonya's right; in fact if you're going to grow your business today you have to utilize those forms of communications or you'll be left behind.

Now technology is bringing us together for maybe the first time.


Barry LaBov
LaBov & Beyond Marketing Communications
www.labov.com

Technology--Stress reduction or stress creation?

When I first got my PDA, I loved it. I didn't have to worry about what emails came in while I was away from the office. I had it right in front of me. Stress relief.

But that was before I knew what PDA stood for. I thought it meant personal digital assistant. I was wrong.

PDA stands for Pavlov's Dog Assistant. When we hear that beep, instead of salivating, we jump to the PDA and look at what just happened. If we don't hear the beep, we press a button to check if anything came in that we missed. We don't go to an event with our kids, we don't go to church, we don't go for a walk and we don't even meditate without it. We allow this technology to interrupt conversations, thoughts and relaxation...

Maybe it's time to stop waiting for the bell or the beep and turn off the chimes. Let's leave the PDA behind when we're doing non-business things or when we are giving someone our full attention and see if the world is still there when we check our PDA later. I bet it will be.

Technology--Good, Bad, or Both?

Way back when I was musician (I was once a songwriter--my songs sold well under one million copies), to be good enough to make a living at it, you had to have good rhythm so that you would be "tight" with the others playing with you. Otherwise, it was a mess. Then, technology stepped in. All you'd have to do is play your part into the computer, press the "quantize" button, and voila, your mistakes and sloppiness would disappear.

I'm not a graphic artist, but I have an agency full of them. In the old days, an artist actually would draw or sketch things. The artist would also have to know how to use a razor blade to cut up and paste the various parts of a layout. Today, the computer can draw for you and all you have to do is press "cut" or "paste" and the computer takes care of that, too.

Due to technology, things can be lost: accuracy in musicianship or artistic skills. By the same token, it can allow creativity to be focused on even more because the value on performance skills is no longer at a premium.This does a number of things. It opens up fields such as music, the arts, and even aviation to people more skilled in computers than in those fields themselves. It also allows people with those old skills to be valued for their old-world knowledge at companies that get it.

Ideally, a performer will have both the old world skills and a great grasp on technology. Fortunately, a good song still needs to be created by humans and a good ad still originates in the minds of the people creating it.

I like technology, but when a plane I'm flying in is experiencing bad weather, I hope my pilots have more than computer skills to fall back on.