by Mark Ollig

Created on: December 03, 2009

Is modern technology controlling us?

This was the topic being discussed on a blog I recently visited.

A few stories on the subject from the past and present come to mind.

My seventh grade science fair project was about US spaceflight.

In a letter to NASA, I wrote asking if they could send me information about the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo space programs.

Three weeks later, a large package from NASA arrived.

Inside were many glossy photos of astronauts and space capsules, along with printed mission report papers.

Using today's computers and Internet technology, I could have easily obtained the same information (and more) in minutes from the NASA web site, without the wait.

So, one positive about modern technology is it saves time and provides instant access to most information when you need it.

It would make an interesting local blog topic for students in our area schools to share how they are benefiting from today's modern technology.

Being in the telecommunications industry for most of my life has allowed me to witness first hand some of the dramatic and beneficial changes which have occurred because of improvements in modern technology.

The processing of our telephone calls for years was completed by using copper wiring, electrical relays and electrometrical switching equipment over an all analog method of transmission.

Back in those early days, a telephone circuit was described as a reliable talking path.

During the early 1980s, a new voice call processing technology became popular in the telecommunications industry.

This new digital processing technology provided reliable Time-Division-Multiplexing of phone calls using state-of-the-art microprocessors and built-in software program functionality.

Today, telecommunications call processing is moving to a soft-switched data-packet processing network using Internet Protocols (IP) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Session Initiation Protocols (SIP) signaling technology.

What future technology will be processing our grandhchildren's phone calls. I can only speculate.

As I wrote in a past column, I have no doubt that future technology would seem like magic to us today.

Seeing what's next is one of the things I enjoy about living in today's modern technological society.

On the other side of the technology question, one blogger states the overuse of some technologies has made us overly dependent on them.

Many years ago, I was in a store during a summer thunderstorm when all of a sudden the power was out.

Sure, the cash

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