Blog Entry #2

After reading the first half of Swedin and Ferro's book "Computers" The Life Story of Technology" I must admit I was not very excited about finishing the book. I am very glad I read the second half as it was much more appealing to my everyday life and I understand a great deal more of the things the author was explaining. In these chapters the authors moved away from just explaining the history of computer evolution and focused more on how the computers began to enter the homes of many families.

It was very interesting to me to learn about the specific companies, Microsoft and Apple, as I was very familiar with their systems and I have relied on them for a majority of my life. My family started out using Microsoft when we bought our first computer for our home in 1994. Thinking back to these times of technology it proved to me how much more efficient computers are today, comparing our dial-up modem to my iphone that has the equivalence of  any computer you can find today. The author's statistic of computer game sales averaging $1.2 billion by 1982 (pg. 103) helps me remember how rarely I relied on the computer and at my age, it was more for entertainment than anything.

This moves me to the main point of the second half of Swedin and Ferro's book, to recognize how largely technology is involved in society today and how greatly it is relied upon. Comparing my family computer which I used mainly for gaming and entertainment, to my macbook which is extremely necessary to my current success in school, I notice the immense difference in the usage of technology in today's society. I always think about what would happen to a majority of the people in the world if for just one day their blackberry, iphone, and other 3G networks were shut off. It is sad to think how reliable our society is on these types of technology but it also proves how efficient and innovative our world has become in order to provide success. The second half of Swedin and Ferro's book was much more interesting to me as I could put myself into this current era of technology and really understand how it has incorporated itself into the current world. Like I said earlier, these chapters were also much more appealing to me as I had better knowledge about the companies and types of technology they were describing, such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, and certain masterminds of technology such as Bill Gates.