The Hills Are Alive...

Music technology has always presented a choice—quality versus convenience.  For example, you can either have a high quality sound system with your favorite music on vinyl or thousands of songs on an iPod with ear buds. I believe this choice will slowly disappear as technology continues to advance. Memory is progressively becoming cheaper and smaller and music could utilize more of this available space for higher quality files.  With Google Fiber spreading its infrastructure and other companies trying to keep up, Internet speeds keep increasing. Not only does this allow faster downloads for higher quality music files, but it also opens doors for higher quality music streaming. Technology keeps moving forward, and music hardware will not be left behind. Portable speakers and headphones will only get better; there isn't much room to keep getting smaller. As music technology improves, the choice between quality and convenience vanishes, leaving the combination of both as the only viable choice for music.  

The Password Problem

Many people struggle when it comes to using strong and varying passwords for different technologies and services. Passwords which are easy to remember generally aren't very strong, and remembering many unique passwords is just not practical. Strong passwords are becoming increasingly important as people use web services to manage their businesses, finances, and personal lives. In response to this password problem, Apple’s new iPhone has a fingerprint recognition sensor that someone has claimed to have already hacked. Why was Apple so confident in this technology? Most forms of biometric identity verification can easily be fooled. I believe biometric verification could work if it were more complex. For example, if there was a combination of 3D face recognition and a DNA test, then the identifying data would be so complex it would take a lot of time and effort to hack. Another proposed solution to the password problem is a USB stick being developed by Google. This solution has its own set of problems, foremost that people lose small objects just as easily as they forget passwords. However, I think something that can generate strong passwords for multiple services is the right direction and it wouldn't have to be as complex as biometric verification. 

What is the place for technology in church meetings? Tablets and smartphones are increasingly replacing paper resources such as lesson manuals and the scriptures, but many people don’t limit themselves to these kinds of activities. While playing angry birds on a muted tablet or smartphone is an improvement over a loud ringtone in sacrament meeting, it can still be a distraction. In spite of this potential distraction, the church seems to be supporting this transition by providing wireless internet in meetinghouses. The idea of surfing the web at church would have made a younger version of me laugh, but before long the idea of not having this technology will seem just as preposterous. However, I think the advantages of this transition will only be worth it to the degree that people use it in ways that are appropriate for a worship centered setting.