Blog Lafayette

I have spent the last several days redesigning another WordPress site and I am just about done. It is amazing how much time working through learning new bits and pieces of technologies can take but I am grateful for the knowledge I have gained through this process. Over the next few weeks I will intersperse articles about the steps I took to install and configure the new plug-ins and such. I hope that I will be able to cut the time short for the next person who comes along trying to figure out how to get their WordPress site to do more than it does out of the box so to speak.

In a story today in Lafayette’s Journal and Courier newspaper, I was glad to hear that the rate of foreign students enrolling in Indiana colleges took a big jump this last year. That is good news for us locally because of Purdue University. Purdue enrolled 6900 foreign students to take the lead in the state in enrollments. That is good for our local economy. In this present time of a down economy and fewer jobs, anything that brings up the money coming into our community is a plus. I am also grateful for Purdue University and it’s reputation. We have one of the best Universities in the United States right here in our own city. Just one more reason why I like living in Lafayette Indiana.

In today’s Journal and Courier there was a story, LSC prepares to replace its outdated computers, about our local school district’s need to replace old computers that were slowing down and not working as they should. The very young students in the story were using their computers to learn math skills and to study for an upcoming state wide test. The computers were having a very hard time loading pictures and other graphics and as a result, the students were having a hard time completing their studies.

Things have surely changed since I was a student! I remember having a class on computer programming that consisted of writing code that was punched onto computer cards and then when you wanted to run the program you would feed your rather large deck of computer cards into a reader. Then you would get a long printout of information and data if you were successful with your writing. We did not get a computer with an actual screen that you could look at until I was almost out of High School. The only time my calculator got slow was when I had to take the time to sharpen it in the pencil sharpener!

Don’t get my nostalgic ramblings wrong. I am not saying it was better then. The tools and methods are vastly improved from my time in school. I am glad that the students of today have the technological tools that they have to use. Even a slow computer is better than no computer if it is being used correctly as a teaching tool. The use of technology allows today’s students the ability to take in more information at a quicker pace. If I had to have a concern about today as compared to earlier times, it would be this. There almost seems to be a state of overload or too much information too quickly for these young minds to take in. The basics are suffering and are getting lost in the complex. If we ever had a time where our technology failed us and we were forced to use our minds and simpler tools, we would find ourselves in a place of disadvantage.

Albert Einstein, one of the smartest men of our time, once said, and I am paraphrasing, “Primitive man is able to build a bow and arrow and hunt for his food and survives, while modern man no longer even understands the working of our simple everyday machines.” He was right. I cannot tell you how a power plant works to generate electricity with any depth or detail. If the power stopped today, I would have no ability or knowledge to make it come back on. Here’s hoping that with the technology that is becoming common in our everyday world, we do not neglect to learn the building blocks that make the technology possible. A cook can make a great pie from a recipe, but a chef makes a masterpiece from a pile of spices and such, and never looks at the recipe because they know cooking inside and out. They know the basics.

One thing that I like about Lafayette Indiana is the technology focus in this town. It doesn’t hurt that Purdue University makes its home in West Lafayette. Purdue is nick-named the “Cradle of Astronauts” and has a School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I was a fan of the astronaut program when I was growing up in the 60s and I distinctly remember owning the Apollo module for the GI Joe of the time. You can bet I wish I still owned those highly collectible items now! Purdue has turned out 22 astronauts with names such as Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Janice E. Voss, and Mary Ellen Weber.

We also have the Purdue Research Park which is home to several companies that do high profile, high tech research in many fields such as medicine and engineering. This is not a town that is happy to fade away into the dust of retirement and obscurity.

As I take the time to think about the technology all around me. I realize that most of us in today’s world take it all for granted. My grandfather was born in 1895. Would he take any of this for granted? We now have the ability to speak to each other at any time from any place. We can send and receive information, photos, documents, videos, music and much more with an ease that has never been seen on our planet. We have machines that can make decisions about their environment and make adjustments accordingly to fit the situation. We even have the ability to publish our own content such as this blog. Gone are the days of using a bulky printing press that required the user to change each individual letter in the press before even one page of print could be turned out. Gone are the days when it would take days to go where we can now travel in hours. When my grandfather was born, this world we now live in would have seemed like a pure fantasy of imagination to any writer, and would have been treated as such. Look at the changes in the world since that time.

I leave you with one last question. What will the world look like 100 years from now? Wow! Hard to imagine isn’t it? I only hope that it is a world of hope, and peace, and love. That is the true constant between all our times and ages. The technology changes but the need for love never will.