Perspectives: How Understanding Tech has Shaped My World View

In 2018, while still pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering, I began to tinker with web technologies. The following year I did an internship at an embedded systems and automation company. During this period, I learned a lot about writing C++ programs that would run on embedded systems devices. I learned how to work with circuit boards, design circuits, and program logic I wanted to see and most importantly I also learned that sensors were responsible for how machines were able to communicate with the world, just like our senses.

The more I tinkered with the different sensors and got to understand how they work, the more I appreciated every single day I was alive. The simple processes of being able to taste food, eat, see the world, listen to music, smell things, and feel, were often taken for granted but here I began to understand the complexity.

Technology opened my mind to understand how the world works more deeply. The next technology I got introduced to back in school was how GSM and satellite technologies worked. The complexities involved in both GSM and other forms of both terrestrial and satellite communication are mind-boggling. Of note too is how the internet works, which is a huge layer of complexity, with fiber optic communication that involves the movement of requests and feedback across the globe in a millionth of a second.

As an everyday user of technology, it is possible to think that the different tech is just casual and simple. But the more you understand the complexities involved the more deeply you will come to appreciate the beauty of being human and the complex contribution and research we have all made in the world around us.

What am I trying to say in essence?

To understand the world around you deeply, and come to appreciate the things that matter, especially life, take some time to find out how the things you use each day work. Could begin from your senses. How do computers mimic the same senses? Or how does your pen work?

Understanding a bit, about how the world works would immensely empower how you interact with it. AI for instance has received a lot of buzz recently, but you must understand, that AI is possible because it is an added layer of technology built around a combination of many other existing tech such as silicon chips, electricity, big data, internet communication protocols, electronics, and the list goes on-and-on. The same applies to blockchain, it wasn't new tech in 2009, even though a successful version was implemented then - all the technologies needed to make it possible were already available waiting for someone who understood it well enough to put it together.

Like a LEGO each generation has built the world on the previous. My fear is that we might reach a generation that no longer understands how the previous foundations were built especially as we get carried away with using technology rather than understanding it well enough to question it or improve it. The same applies to every other thing we do. Have you ever questioned how the activities you engage in everyday work? and whether you can improve it. from how you mix that recipe, cook, write, dance, draw, etc

Always remember that all we currently have is not all that is or all that can be.

See you next week, we move!!!