Don't be a n00b.
I took Visual Basic last year, and was the only girl in the class. All of the boys, at least for the first few months or so, seemed to think that they could disparage me, purely because I’m a girl. They played the gender card, so I stepped it up and played the skill card. I made a themed matching game, with various pictures and songs for each theme. It was only six-hundred or so lines of code (most of which was inserting the resources to the variables and randomizing them) but everyone loved it. There were a few errors, but those were simply logic errors, such as not changing the toolbar name after each run. Visual Basic is a business-oriented programming language, so creating a simple matching game is an example of the flexibility of technology. The dictionary definition of “technology,” in all it’s glory, is; “the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.” Wow, that was a mouthful. Thanks, dictionary.com, for wasting half of the first paragraph.
When you hear “technology,” you most likely envision someone who never leaves their computer, and has no social life, right? Well, that may be your outlook, but the fact is wholly different. Technology has begun to influence everything around us. Clothing is made using machines, computers are used in close to every career field, and even the government has acknowledged the influence technology has had on us.
Technology has had a massive effect on novels for a while, but has just recently bloomed fully. It is shown as a part of downfall, surveillance, or just getting past a network block to play some video games on school grounds (which is pretty easy) Take the novel “Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow, for example. The school part of the book is set in has a comprehensive security system, but there are many flaws with it. Like the gait-recognition system, this sounds an alarm if someone has an unrecognized way of walking. This can happen if someone gets new shoes or suffers an injury, or, like the main character, puts small bags of gravel in their shoes. Hey, whatever works.
Now, on the topic of getting through a school’s network to play video games, it’s actually some pretty easy stuff. First part; change the program name. Say you need to run “Gimp 2.6” at school, but the administrative blocks won’t let you use it. Just rename the application file to “$SYS$Gimp 2.6” and it will act like a system program- hidden from the task manager, the user, and therefore, the network! You still have a problem, though, if you want to play online video games on school grounds. There's a loophole for that, too. All you need is something called an Onion Router. Everything you do is encrypted, and sent through multiple nodes, so you can't be traced. Of course, you need the actual Onion Router program on your flash drive, since having it in a network drive isn't exactly your best choice. Just get those two things, and you can be playing Jade Dynasty instead of doing that Chinese assignment in the computer lab. Would I ever do that? Probably not, since it seems like every time I break the rules, no matter how careful I am, I get caught. So I just don't bother risking it.
Technology is a very prominent subject in video games as well, even if you don't really notice it. In "Mirror's Edge," Merc uses GPS technology to track Faith and Celeste as they make their runs, and is able to contact them from anywhere. In "Kingdom Hearts 2," Ansem creates a virtual Twilight Town, in order to keep Roxas in line while Namine patches together Sora's memories, which were dispersed in Castle Oblivion. In the ".hack//GU" trilogy, technology is extremely important and influences every aspect of life, even home security and making purchases. Unfortunately, when a data anomaly known as "AIDA," which at first had benevolent intentions, started to put people into comas, action had to be taken to exterminate AIDA and bring them out of a coma. Once AIDA is exterminated, another threat approaches in the form of Cubia, which beings to put strain in Japan's entire network, which could have catastrophic result. Of course, the hero saves the day and gets the girl, in some cases. (There is a possible gay wedding event, which is extremely funny in my opinion. Haseo's face is just priceless!)
Music means different things to different people. To some, it's a waste of time, or a method of relaxation. For people like myself, it's a way of life. I've tried going without music before, and it was the worst day of my life. My favorite kind of music? Techno, J-Rock, and J-Hop and jazz. Techno obviously is derived from technology, since computers are used heavily in that genre. Even singers have been created using technology. Case in point- the Vocaloid series.Created by Yamaha and Crypton in Japan, Vocaloid takes vocal libraries from voice actors and singers, and creates a program that can be used to synthesize lyrics. Series 03, which was just released earlier this year, contained Megurine Luka (name translates to "A sound that travels the world") a bilingual Vocaloid with two libraries (English and Japanese) Of course, series 01 and 02 can be used for English songs, but they sound very synthesized and choppy, since you have to use Katakana for everything. There and also a few English Vocaloids out, such as Lola and Leon, but those aren't as popular as the mascot, Miku Hatsune (name translates to "Future of the First Sound.") The others in the 02 series and Rin and Len Kagamine (names translate to "Left and Right Mirrored Sounds") and use the same voice banks, just in different octave settings (Len is male, Rin is female.) There is also Gackpo, a Vocaloid using the voice data of the famous V-Kei singer Gackt. There are also fan-made Vocaloids, which are simply the official Vocaloids, just in different octaves.
Modern technology is complex, no doubt about it. It takes smart people to design it, build it, and fix it. Unfortunately, the IQ threshold for breaking it has become even lower than ever. My brother an I had this amazing custom computer called the Demon. (it looks like a demon's face, and it melted three CPU's) It was worth a few thousand dollars, but it needed a good cleaning with an air hose. So, we brought it to our friend's house. He cleaned it out, but forgot to put the fan back on the CPU before starting the computer. Now there's a hole in the middle of the CPU. He still owes us a new one. It was a 3.25gHz dual-core.
Why do people think programming is hard? If anything, it just takes logic, and the ability to break things down to their simplest components. That's where Carnegie Mellon came in with Alice. Alice is an IDE program that can be used to create simple animations and cool programs, while making it fun and easy for everyone. If you want to try out Alice for yourself, just go to www.alice.org and click "Download." Oh, and it's completely free.
Technology enables us to make things easier and safer, but there are always going to be people who hack into these things. I'll admit- I've done my fair share of hacking and exploiting loopholes, but I have a rather benevolent task at hand. As security gets smarter, so do criminals, homebrewers, software pirates, and hackers. I hack to expose flaws in security systems- and them implement my methods in reverse, to show how the security system can become more secure. In fact, that's what most hackers do, even if they don't realize it. I started with hacking for fun, now I have a cause. Of course, I stick to hacking my own computer. Sure, I've been asked to hack into bank accounts and the like before, but I've only been arrested once- the last thing I need is more criminal charges.
Technology is big now, and nobody's really sure of the future of it. I say the only limits for growth are in the minds and imaginations of the people. Oh, one final thing; stop making fun of geeks. Soon enough, we'll be your bosses.
