My thoughts on Comtech 2012

Last week we had our last comtech lesson. I started the course with very low expectations, I had talked to the older students who all seemed quite horrified with how the course had turned out, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. In the end I enjoyed it, even though it contained some very all to basic stuff – like 3 hours of learning how to create a twitter account, and three hours of starting up in WordPress (to the teachers defense, they warned us that those lessons would be basic, but still I didn’t want to miss them because I didn’t know what they thought was basic).

The things I enjoyed in this course was the practical assignments (TAB and Infographic). Starting of with the TAB (Techno Auto Biography) I really got to understand that you could make your powerpoints and presentations so much easier to understand and fun to watch. I really think that some of the TEACHERS at the Uni should take the “Death by powerpoint” lesson themselves…With the infographics – again, the lessons were a bit basic – there was quite a lot of time to work on your own and ask the teachers the questions you wanted. Because of that I learned some new stuff even though I’ve worked in the programs we used a little before (PS, Illustrator and InDesign). It was very much a “what you make of it” course that at least gave you the opportunity to do some fun stuff if you took the chance.

However the theory and literature I didn’t care for that much at all. We had two books Misunderstanding the Internet and Television. Misunderstanding the Internet I think was okay but the Television book must be the most uninspiring book I have ever tried to read (I didn’t come close to finishing it). It was just hard to understand and felt out of date (written 1970ish). Although the purpose may have been to give us some perspective or something I didn’t think it deserved a part of the course. I really hope they do not use it in the future, even if it means I won’t be able to sell my copy of the book.

My Techno Autobiography

Isn’t it almost scary how fast the technical world develops? Here is a small part of the different tech I used during my 21 years here on earth (emphasize on small).

 

Triumph of the nerds

I have always been fascinated by nerds. “Nerds” as in the kind of people who can stay completely focused on one thing for a very long time and often, be really good at it.

I just finished watching a 3 part documentary series called “Triumph of the nerds”. It’s about the Silicon Valley computer nerds who devoted their life to developing the personal computers. I sort of envy them. Not that I want to sit in front of a computer writing codes all day, but the determination and the feeling they seemed to have found doing something they enjoy is kind of fascinating. Because what struck me while watching the documentary was that most of these people were doing what they did because they liked to. It wasn’t to get famous or earn money to get rich, it was something completely else that drove them, a genuine interest in their work.

Now the two main nerds of this documentary, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, both became very rich and very famous so I guess that is part of their “triumph”. But there is maybe one more thing. And that is that more and more people think that nerds are, with one word, awesome!