This site is about being “tied” up in tech. There is both a positive and negative connotation to that concept that needs to be fleshed out in these pages.
I grew up at the same time that technology did. When I was in school, technology was 16mm movie projectors and tube radios. When I entered college, computers entered the mainstream. I spent many hours at Radio Shack marveling over the Model 100 as it matured and developed. I watched the birth of Apple and Microsoft. I played on VAX/VMS in college and was introduced to mainframes. For two summers at Keyport Naval Station I explored HP’s 9845 and color graphics long before we had color graphics on personal computers – or for that matter before we really had personal computers because most of them were still running CPM and Digital DOS. I peeked and poked on my Apple IIe and learned most of what I wanted to know from the Beagle Brothers. I marveled at the Mac and played with it from 128K to 2M – and finally a hard drive.
But, here’s the kicker. I do not have a single class on any of my college transcripts in computers or technology. My degrees are in education and psychology. My doctoral work is in leadership. I can run any computer on the planet and hack with the best of them, but I don’t believe in technology for the sake of technology.
For me, technology is tied to what we can become and what we should become. Technology is tied to the evolution of man and we can no longer ignore the import of what it means to be either a digital immigrant or a digital native. In my mind, if you aren’t one or the other, Darwin would consider you doomed. Despite being born in the wrong generation – the in-between generation – I believe myself to be native. Either that, or I’m the immigrant that almost feels like he belongs with the natives.
So, TechTied is about putting technology together with life, love, and learning. Technology is about be’ing more than it is about do’ing. Technology is about transparency. Technology is about leveraging the best of who we are and taking it all to a new level.
Jon P. Zurfluh
Consultant