tech dependence…
Because technological advancement is mostly quite gradual, one hardly notices it creeping into ones life. Only if you would instantly remove these high tech commodities, you’d realize how dependent one has become.
A random list of ‘nonphysical’ things I wouldn’t want to live without anymore:
Internet
- wikipedia.org: everything you ever wanted to know — and much more
- google.com (e.g., news, scholar, maps, webmaster tools, …): basically the internet;-)
- Web 2.0 communities (e.g., youtube.com, facebook.com, myspace.com, linkedin.com, twitter.com, del.icio.us, …): your virtual social network
- dict.leo.org: towards the babel fish
- amazon.com: recommendations from the fat tail of the probability distribution
Tools
- Web browsers (e.g., Firefox): your window to the world
- Version control systems (e.g., Subversion): get organized
- CMS (e.g., TYPO3): disentangle content from design on your web page and more
- LaTeX typesetting software (btw, this is not a fetish;-): the only sensible and aesthetic way to write scientific documents
- Wikies: the wonderful world of unstructured collaboration
- Blogs: get it out there
- Java programming language: truly platform independent and with nice GUI toolkits (SWT, Swing, GWT); never want to go back to C++ (and don’t even mention C# or .net)
- Eclipse IDE: how much fun can you have while programming?
- MySQL: your very own relational database (the next level: db4o)
- PHP: ok, Ruby is perhaps cooler, but PHP is so easy to work with (e.g., integrating MySQL and web stuff)
- Dynamic DNS (e.g., dyndns.com): let your home computer be a node of the internet
- Web server (e.g., Apache 2): open the gateway
- CSS: ok, if we have to go with HTML, this helps a lot
- VoIP (e.g., Skype): use your bandwidth
- P2P (e.g., BitTorrent): pool your network
- Video and audio compression (e.g., MPEG, MP3, AAC, …): information theory at its best
- Scientific computing (R, Octave, gnuplot, …): let your computer do the work
- Open source licenses (Creative Commons, Apache, GNU GPL, …): the philosophy!
- Object-oriented programming paradigm: think design patterns
- Rich Text editors: online WYSIWYG editing, no messing around with HTML tags
- SSH network protocol: secure and easy networking
- Linux Shell-Programming (”grep”, “sed”, “awk”, “xargs”, pipes, …): old school Unix from the 70s
- E-mail (e.g., IMAP): oops, nearly forgot that one (which reminds me of something i really, really could do without:
spam) - Graylisting: reduce spam
GNU/Linux
- Debian (e.g., Kubuntu): the basis for it all
- apt-get package management system: a universe of software at your fingertips
- Compiz Fusion window manager: just to be cool…
It truly makes one wonder, how all this cool stuff can come for free!!!
tags: internet, web technologies, computers, open source, linux, web 2.0, social networks, programming