Mom and the Ipad

Since my sister got her ipad from school this year, it has been a huge hit with my family specially my mom. It's interesting watching her interact with this newer kind of technology because technology in general isn't really a big thing in my household but for some reason she has grown attached to the ipad. Because she doesn't have a job where she needs a lot of digital technology my mom doesn't really have the skills necessary to navigate these kinds of technologies, this can be seen every time she tries to change the channel on the T.V. and ends up messing it up, but she has gotten quite acquainted with the ipad. She doesn't necessarily know how to manage the way around the whole thing and use the all of the different apps, but she certainly does know the simple things such as taking pictures and videos, watching videos on youtube, and scrolling through pictures on FaceBook. I asked her why she liked it so much, and she simply responded "because it's fun, and it's different." I can she were she comes from when she says this because she was born in a small ranch town in Mexico with 10 brothers and sisters so digital technology is really a huge commodity for her, and really the whole family. For this reason too she was grown to like the ipad and grown more comfortable with learning how to use it. Most of her family lives either in California or Mexico so keeping in touch with them in most easily done with pictures and videos posted on Facebook and so she just uses my sisters' accounts to look at the things our cousins or aunts have posted. Also, she likes the simple fact that its such a handy tool and extremely accessible. Such as during this Thanksgiving break we were able to pull up recipes for her and she could just read off of the tablet, while having her favorite music playing in the background as well. Another occurrence was Saturday morning when my parents and one of my older sisters where having a conversation about stories in her "old Mexico" and during the conversation we could look up different pictures and maps of where things were and what they looked like, which she really enjoyed because we were all together having a fun conversation. Another thing she has recently discovered is Vine and Snapchat, it is fun to watch her make funny videos with my sister and nieces and nephews because they all seem to be enjoying themselves with the tablet at the same time.

My Mom and Our First PC

I decided to just talk to my mom about what it was like for her when she bought our first home computer. She explained to me how it took a lot for her to even buy one for the house. She knew little to nothing about computers and she had no idea what type of computer would be best to buy, how to put internet on it, or how to even work it at all. She knew that we really needed to get one for the house however, because I would talk about them all the time as a kid when I would come home from school and I was taking a computer class in elementary school where I was learning how to type and it would be better for me to practice at home.

Initially, at that age, I was just asking for the computer for the games and that was mostly what I used it for until she finally figured out how to put internet on it. She mentioned how even setting up the computer was a difficult process. She wanted to have the computer all set up and gift wrapped so I can open it as one of my presents for Christmas. She set up the desk and that was the easy part for her, but the computer just seemed so complicated and foreign that she just gave up and asked my sisters to do it. She said it was all worth it when she saw the joy in my face when I unwrapped the computer on Christmas day and played all of my little Barbie computer games. She knew that the worst was yet to come however because soon I would want to get on the internet, and that would be yet another thing she had to figure out. It took about three years before she could properly figure out how to put internet on the computer. She started off with AOL but she hated me using it because people would always call the house or she would want to get on the phone.

Eventually I stopped getting on the computer because the internet was too slow, and I couldn't get on for a long time anyway, and she was worried about that because she bought the computer for me. She did not really use it much, she felt no use for it, and she wasn't into the buttons and gadgets and widgets or whatever it was. So she figured out how to get internet on the computer through the cable company and on again I went. She didn't start to use the computer until I was at the end of my Middle School years because things were starting to become digitized and she couldn't avoid it. She asked me mostly how to work it, or I would have to be right by her side helping her finish whatever task she had to do. Today however she is a little use computers, but still she has some struggles. Like using Skype for her is like the world’s longest math problem to her.  This is all interesting to hear from her because it just showed me how much of a real digital immigrant she was, and it just reminded me of how frustrated I would get with her. I did not realize how big of a transition it would be to use a computer until I began taking this course, along with my other FIG classes, so I appreciate where she is coming from a lot more now.

My Mom's iPhone Experience

For some reason, information technologies tend to be popular topics of discussion within my family.
We tend to talk about the role of instant communication in my siblings' lives in comparison to methods of communication my parents had when they were young adults. Usually, this conversation turns in to speculations of future technologies followed by some other technology-based rant.

This Thanksgiving break, my mom was determined to improve her ability to operate her iPhone and navigate through various apps and features. Specifically, she wanted to increase her phone's storage space by moving her pictures on to our home desktop. In fact, this was one of the first things my mom told me about once I got home. While I'm proud of her efforts, she only knew about this option because  of her trip to the Apple store. However, I can't like I am an entirely tech-savvy person; as it turns out, I didn't know how to move pictures on to our computer either.

After my sister helped her with this problem, I knew I would be able to help with my mom's other technological problems. She has updated to iOS 7 and does not quite understand its new features. Additionally, she needed help learning how to send pictures in text messages. Normally, if she wants to send me a picture, she sends me an e-mail. So this past week I made it a personal goal to teach her how to send pictures much more efficiently. It took her a couple tries, but once she got it down, she started to send me a slightly excessive amount of pictures: everything from our table decorations to pictures of family members.

While they may not know all of the tricks and shortcuts, or even the basic functionalities, both my mom and dad have a fascination with modern technology. They have a desire to stay connected with me, my family, and their friends using up-to-date media devices. They both have updated iPhones and use our family iPad regularly. My siblings and I take on our parents' electronic education as a responsibility and, in doing so, we improve our own technological awareness.

Thanksgiving assignment

At first when I thought about asking my Grandpa to describe to me most important information technology he used to use, I thought he wouldn't know truthfully because he was to old. My grandpa Leon is 85 years old, but he's still got it. He plays tennis every other morning and eats well for the most part. When I thought longer about asking him though, it was perfect. So, after Thanksgiving dinner, I sat down with my Grandpa and asked him what kind of technology he used to use.

My grandfather was a lawyer who worked in New York City from 1955- 1995. He is an experienced veteran when it comes to law. Anyway, he said the typewriter was the most commonly used technology he dealt with on a day-to-day basis. Whether he used it for typing notes, documents, etc., he used it often. I asked him, “How did you first learn to use the technology?” His response was simply, “someone taught me, then I taught myself.” The one thing about my Grandpa is that he is a stubborn man, so he just gave me simple answers. I then asked him, “How difficult was it to master?” He responded, “Not at all, I got it in a heartbeat.” I asked him a plethora of questions about the technology, but unfortunately my grandfather isn’t the talkative type.

My entire conversation with my grandfather wasn’t so successful, but it relates to this course in that the typewriter was an invention that sped up information and information travel in that era. All in all, my grandfather really didn’t provide me with enough good data to show how the typewriter, in his experience with it, analyzes this course. 

My Mom's First Job

When I asked my mom about information technologies that had been important in her career, her first thought was of when her company started to use typewriters with memory to do work. This functioned mainly like a normal typewriter, but it made it possible to store small phrases in the typewriter's memory for future use. Since all of the documents that she had to make had to be typed on a typewriter before they could be submitted, this made it easy to just program a heading for multiple documents and use it over and over instead of having to type the same phrase tediously on large numbers of letters and documents. It also prevented early mistakes that could have gone unnoticed and required that the whole document be rewritten on the typewriter.

After my mom told me about the typewriter with memory that she used, she was quick to point out that it was even better when her office bought its first computer. However, the company only bought one computer and if she wanted to get time to use it she had to come in earlier than everyone else and start her work even earlier. She did note that this was worth it, and that she was thankful when there were more computers available to use. Unlike her typewriter, she was able to store large amount of information and easily transfer words, phrases, or headings without much effort. Computers also allowed for easy editing of documents. Unlike in the past when she would have to retype an entire document if there were errors, she was now able to simply go back to the document on the computer, quickly edit it, and reprint it for submission.

Listening to my mom's story was intriguing, to say the least. I had always known that she had used typewriters, but never typewriters with any sort of memory in them. I had never known before that there were typewriters that were able to store short phrases for use on multiple documents. I also was interested to hear how amazed she was at computer features that seem so simple to me, like the copy and paste functions. It was also relieving to know that I never had to endure the age of having to retype an entire document just because of a few simple mistakes that are easy to make while typing out a document.

My Dad's Use of the Bloomberg

For the last thirty years my dad has worked as a government bond broker. This involves putting together institutional buyers and sellers of government bond trades. In the beginning this was done simply by using computers, but in the past eight year his job has become more efficient due to the introduction of the Bloomberg system. The Bloomberg analyzes different trades, shows different bids and offers and works out financing and costs of trades.

Before the Bloomberg bond brokers were required to do more research, do the math themselves and use many different sources in order to gather enough information to make a profit. The Bloomberg has helped to eliminate this in order to make the bond brokering process efficient and quicker. The Bloomberg also effectively follows all of a broker’s trades, rather than requiring someone to sit next with the broker and track his work throughout the day.  Thus, the Bloomberg has been regarded as a threat to some. It has taken away the job of those who would track trades and there is fear that it will eventually lead the elimination of bond brokers, but so far this has not occurred.

People still trust having a real broker to communicate and discuss trades rather than relying on a machine to do the work for them. The Bloomberg has helped to make my dad’s work more productive by cutting down busy work of figuring out math or patterns, allowing him to now be able to spend more time communicating with individual clients. This has allowed him to have a more enjoyable job by giving him more time to communicate with others and work on building strong relationships with his clients.

Due to my dad’s difficulty being able to use computers, he has found the Bloomberg fairly difficult to master. Although he is able to use it to his advantage, he feels that there are still many more features available that he is not sure how to use and believes that if he had grown up with more use of computers he would be able to more easily grasp the concepts needed to fully use the system. He has already noticed that many younger workers are able to more easily learn the functions and use it more to their advantage. Overall, although the Bloomberg has dramatically changed the way he works in the last eight years, the introduction of the technology has been looked upon in a positive light, thus leading to an improvement in efficiency and accuracy in the workplace.

My mom and her computer

I really didn't have to ask my mom what the most important information technology she uses at work is. I have plenty of evidence of it already: She brings one home every night, she has had one at her desk at every office of hers I've visited, and as far as I know, it's pretty much all she looks at all day at work. I'm talking, of course, about a personal computer. My mom is an architect, which is a profession that is pretty much always tied to computer use at this point. Once heavily based on drafting and sketching, architecture is now almost all done on the computer. For this reason, my mom is actually not technically challenged at all when it comes to PCs, because she's almost always used them, be it at work or at home.

My mom actually went through all of architecture school not using a computer, as architecture software hadn't become so ubiquitous at that point that it was being taught in schools. She was aware of how to use a keyboard, since she had used one in helping with her school newspaper in high school, but other than that her computer experience had been limited to those that used punch cards rather than PCs as we think of them today. Her first real experience with the computers she'd go on to use for her entire career happened at the beginning of said career, when she worked in New York. She did not find it extremely hard to use, though, and it wasn't a change for her at all since she had never actually worked in architecture when it was all done by hand. She was taught to use it by her coworkers and by lessons given to her entire office. It wasn't hard to use, she says, but it was strange given she had spent her entire college career how to do these tasks by hand.

My mom feels that architecture done using the computer is far more quick and productive, but there are still some architects out there who prefer not to use it. My mom's boss at her previous job had no idea how to use the computer for architecture, or really for anything at all, and did all his drawings by hand still. I wouldn't say that there are factions in architecture because of this, per se, since very few people don't use the computer today, but there is still some debate over which method works better. My mom likes to draw, and didn't have an issue with it in college, but today says she probably wouldn't be able to do her work without her computer.

In respect to this course and my own experiences, it seems that architecture has been one of the professions that has most embraced technology. While computers are helpful, architecture requires a human being to actually construct designs, so there was never any threat of computers replacing workers, much as there was in other workspaces such as factories or libraries. For this reason, no level of worker in architecture really had to fear the addition of technology to the workspace, so perhaps this is why technology has been embraced by architects. I think that my mom's experiences with drawing in school and using computers as soon as she got out is pretty common for an entire generation of architects, but I know that computer programs are taught and utilized in colleges today, so today's students come right out of college with the skills to work. My mom still has to learn (she's currently taking a class on the program Revit for work), but I think she's actually more technologically savvy than many people her age because of her job.