Technology That Empowers Me

Technology can be both a blessing and a curse.  It empowers people and it also takes away things like jobs.    It gives and it takes away.  Today, I got to thinking about technology that empowers me as an individual.
 
Obviously, the Internet is my first thought when thinking of technology that empowers me.  Google in particular.  With the Internet at my fingertips and powerful Internet search engines like Google only a click of a mouse away, I can become an expert (or at least more knowledgeable) about nearly any topic, thus saving the day .  I am empowered by the Internet.

GPS (Global Positioning System) devices also empower me.  I mean, what would I do on trips with my family (or all alone) without my nifty Garmin to keep me company and tell me when I veer off course.

DropBox yet another  technology that  is very empowering .

All your computers and smart devices keep you connected and productive--until the file you need is on your work computer, and you're in an airport with a notebook. Once you’ve created a document, you need to save it somewhere. When you are running a business you must be sure to backup your data. Apart from an external hard drive, I use Dropbox. Dropbox  stores your files off-site. Unless you are working away from your office, there is no need to access their website every time you need to save a document. Dropbox will create a new Dropbox folder on your computer and you save your documents there. The My Dropbox folder is local on each device, so you use it as you would any other folder. Even when you're not online, you can drag and drop files to it, create subfolders, save or open files, etc. But as soon as you connect to the Web, that folder automatically syncs with all other local My Dropbox folders linked to your Dropbox account. Or, you can access your private, password-protected folder on dropbox.com from any Internet-connected device.     

The one technology that empowers me, oddly enough is the same technology that I griped about yesterday! My cell phone.  

There are many things I can list - but truly it's technology that keeps me going day to day: the computer I'm typing on right now, my TV ,my DSLR, my back up hard drives, my portable drives, my off side backups...shall I go on?

What amazes me, and I suppose empowers me as well, is how quickly information can be shared with anyone and anything in any small corner of the globe. This blog post, for example, can be read by someone sitting behind their computer in Jakarta, someone flipping through their Blackberry in Helsinki, or someone walking down the street with their iPhone in La Paz.

The fact of the matter is, there is not merely one technology that empowers me, but technology as a collective whole that empowers me, as well as everyone else in the world. I’ve got the world at my finger tips, and at the rate we’re going, I have the distinct feeling we’re going to be a whole lot more empowered in years to come.