Keynote Speech: Why Technology Matters

An amusing and accurate look at how technology sometimes helps us and sometimes impedes us.

We are so enamored with computers and technology that we often lose the basic idea:

Technological advances allow the production of more output from existing resources.

These include more efficient ways of producing existing output as well as the production of new (or substantially improved) items. We gain both from more output/cheaper prices and from improved items and innovations.

We can break technological advances into two rough categories:

1) Killer Applications of Technology - ones that change our lives.
These include email, online shopping and retailing, and cellphones.

Email has so fully permeates our lives, how could we live without it? My wife says I check my email more often than I go to the bathroom - she might be right!

2) Incremental or “Less than Killer Applications” of Technology - non disruptive applications of technology whose net sum is extremely significant. These include DVD players, antilock brakes, and central heat and air conditioning.

For example, I’m a coffee aficionado. When I absolutely positively must wake up early and know I won’t want to, for example when I have an important morning meeting after flying in late or staying up half the night working with Hong Kong clients, I wake up to the smell of fresh coffee. My coffee maker has a built in timer. Just the smell of the fresh coffee makes all the difference in the world. It might sound foolish, but it does make a difference to me and that’s all that matters.

There are also some severe problems with technology, or at least our uses and applications of them. These include the unreliability of PCs and Software, safety (or lack of it) on the Internet, Excessive Connectivity, as well as
“Technology for Technology’s Sake.”

My mother has a avocado green refrigerator from the 70s that's 100% reliable and never had to be rebooted. It puts my PC to shame!

My wife’s new spaceage minivan is more high tech than many spaceships in old science fiction movies. Much of this technology is very useful, but some of it is simply ridiculous.For example the keys have microprocessors in them! A key without the microprocessor can unlock the doors but not start the engine. Allegedly it’s an antitheft feature, although it reeks of “technology for technology’s sake.” Somehow I think it’ll be more of an impediment to the rightful van’s owner if they ever lose their keys than a professional car thief.

Technology has improved our lives significantly. Most of us have friends or family who quite literally wouldn't be alive without the massive advances in medical technology.

Unfortunately as technology has evolved, our applications and uses of technology haven't. In fifty years or less a lot of our uses of technology will seem ludicrous and comical in retrospect! Some of them already do.

Ted Demopoulos' first significant exposure to computers was in 1977 when he had unlimited access to his high school's PDP-11, and hacked at it incessantly. He consequently almost flunked out but learned he liked playing with computers a lot.

Ted's first business ventures began in college and have been continuous ever since. He's a veteran of several startups, including both successes and textbook failures. He currently consults and speaks on Technology and Business, and has equity stakes in two startups.

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