Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

Identity. Let’s say your name is Bob Smith. If for whatever reason you couldn’t be called Bob Smith tomorrow, would you care? How much of our internal identity is tied to our name? If you’re not “Bob Smith,” who are you?

This entry is the first in my “Draft Archives” series, consisting of previously unpublished draft posts. They represent various underdeveloped thoughts, ideas, and musings that I never fleshed out, and as such they are quite short. Still, I found them to be interesting at the time, and I hope they make you think a little when you read them. Enjoy!

I wonder sometimes if human beings are capable of fundamentally altering themselves. Psychology tells us that a lot of “who we are” is something that’s mostly solidified by the time we’re six or seven. When we seem like we’ve made some sort of drastic change (from the perspective of those around us) have we really “changed,” or is the old person still somewhere under our skin? How much control do we have post-childhood of our own personalities and behaviors?

I’ve been a proponent of mobile devices and ultra-portable computers for a number of years now. I firmly believe that the future of our computing devices lies in handhelds and small form factor machines. Why? Because with the advances in fast, ubiquitous wireless data access, we no longer have to keep our data local to our machines. Thin client computing is making more and more sense nowadays as high-speed internet and massive hard drives continue to plummet in price. HP recently launched a service called Upline that provides unlimited data storage for $5/month for individual users. Four terabytes of photos? No problem! Just put them into the ‘cloud’ of internet storage for safekeeping.

Google and a few other companies have been touting their free online office applications. What you used to have to do on a locally installed office suite, you can now do online. Even multimedia applications are making the move. Adobe recently launched an online version of Photoshop called Express that has a comparable featureset. The benefits of offloading storage and processing power to the computing cloud are huge. For one, costs for client hardware decrease as you don’t need as much local storage or processing power to get your computing tasks done. Device subsequently need less battery power, so you can use smaller batteries and decrease the size of your hardware.

There are reasons why fully-featured portable devices like the iPhone are so successful; they combine excellent user interfaces with streamlined, responsive hardware. The web browsing experience on my iPod touch comes extremely close to matching that of my desktop computer. Even now, we’re seeing more and more devices that are cutting the traditional desktop PC out of the equation. You can buy books, newspapers, and magazines for the Amazon Kindle via the device’s CDMA wireless radio. It never needs to be plugged into a PC at all to function. By freeing itself from the tethers of a PC, the Kindle allows you to take it anywhere knowing that you can buy a book or download a sample reading no matter where you are.

There’s a bright future in the field of mobile devices!

(updated April 8th, 2008)

I was watching some speakers over at TED Talks recently, and Clifford Stoll noted something along the lines of “Our society is changing. We’ve got a generation of kids that are whizzes at text messaging, who get a lot of screen time…that have never been out bowling.” It got me thinking: what prices are we paying for our technological ‘progress’? For each “great leap forward,” there’s a new downside to consider. We’re connected to the world day in and out via the internet, constantly reachable via our BlackBerry devices, and we prefer the comforting anonymity of text chat to a conversation with an actual person. What sacrifices are we making to fuel the irrepressible march of the machines? I’d say we’re giving up a lot more than we’re willing to admit.

I walked outside today to head up to my chemistry course and I noticed that springtime had finally seemed to arrive. The sun was out, the skies were crystal clear, and there was a light breeze keeping everything comfortably cool. I just stood there outside my apartment building’s door for a moment, basking in the sun, and I thought about why I didn’t get out and enjoy being ‘unplugged’ more often. Why didn’t I bother to go outside (sans a backpack of gadgets) and just bask in the sunshine more often? I had difficulty thinking of a good reason.

All of this reminded me of some outdoor trips I’ve taken over the last four years. My experiences white-water rafting down in the Grand Canyon with a bunch of perfect strangers, free from the constant pulls of technological connectedness, have been some of the most peaceful and spiritually rewarding moments I’ve had in my lifetime. Those times gave me a chance to reconnect face-to-face with people, to share stories, to eat, drink, and laugh alongside newfound friends. To spend a carefree afternoon swimming in a river. To explore a slot canyon. To sit in the sand and think about life, the universe, and everything. Being able to work and live alongside people in a close-knit community, even for just two weeks, is immeasurably rewarding.

Now, I realize that a return to ’simpler times’ could be considered extreme. I certainly don’t expect everyone to decide to go back to our subsistence farming, tight-knit village lifestyles just to reap the benefits of community. But consider that we could become closer to our fellow friends and neighbors in other ways. Why not engage in some neighborhood beautification projects? Build a playground. Organize a town pride day. Participate in your local government. Perhaps we could consider engaging in more co-housing, where a large group of people pool their money to buy a large piece of land, and then plan out the neighborhood streets, housing, and common facilities themselves. Not only does the participatory nature of the process help bring people together, but so do the neighborhood layouts. These layouts cluster private residences together to promote a sense of closeness. A common house (think “Student Center”) and large amounts of shared land (think the Greenspace here at Bentley) function as communal gathering and recreational spaces.

If nothing else, do yourself a favor today. Turn off your cell phone and computer, go outside, and spend fifteen minutes just being unplugged. Talk to a stranger, go for a walk. Take a deep breath and take in the world around you. I guarantee that you’ll find yourself feeling a little less stressed. Think about what our (over)reliance on technology for work, home, and play is doing to us as a society and to you as an individual, and ask yourself if this is a road we want to continue to go down.