The Humanity of Technology

Sunday, 7th June 2009

It’s been a tough week. This week I lost one of my most trusted business associates who has been with me through all the good times and the bad ever since I started BLKMGK ICT four years ago. This week, my beloved Ferrari Laptop died.

Okay by now I’m sure all of you think that I’ve gone stark raving mad - “His computer died and he’s upset??? What a geek!” or “It’s only a machine, get over it you nerd!” but let me explain.

When I first started BLKMGK ICT I knew very little about business, or how things work in the world for that matter. I had faith in my technical abilities to perform as an ICT consultant, and a couple of clients here and there, but nothing really solid behind me. I knew that I needed a laptop and so I went shopping for one. The first store that I walked into had a few computers on display and immediately the Ferrari laptops caught my eye. I’d heard about them before but never actually seen one up close. They were brilliant. Beautiful big screens, crystal clear displays, and they were the world’s first laptop to have a carbon fibre lid! This doesn’t really mean anything but it looks wayyy cool and also makes the laptop just that little bit lighter. So why did Ferrari bring out a laptop??? Well they didn’t. See the laptop is from the computer company Acer and they have a couple of computers that use AMD processors in them. Now AMD sponsors Scuderia Ferrari in Formula One, so as a branding exercise they combined with Ferrari to use their brand on the laptop. The thing is though it wasn’t just a branding exercise. At the time the Ferrari had some quite decent performance behind it, and it had other little Ferrari touches, such as badges. It also carried the Ferrari theme - when you started it up it made the sound of a Ferrari F1 car screaming through the track. The desktop had a Ferrari theme also, and a calendar built into it that displayed the current date (wayyy before Vista’s sidebar came along). Also, every month it would display a new photo of a Ferrari F1 car in action. The branding didn’t just end there. The keyboard was built in a slight U shape so as to be more ergonomic, and the entire laptop was covered in soft rubber. Last but not least...there was the mouse. Again Ferrari branded and covered with the same soft rubber. The whole thing was brilliant and I didn’t think twice in buying it. It was love at first sight!

When I do my motivational talks to school kids around the place, a strong component of that is standing out from the crowd. BLKMGK’s slogan is “Something Different” and we try to be something different in everything that we do and stand out from the crowd. My new laptop let me stand out from the crowd - big time! Whenever I’d be on site at a client’s office, people would remark about “The Ferrari” and invite others to come and see the consultant with the Ferrari. When I first started, this was gold for me because it would allow me to market my services simply because I had something different from the rest of the consultants around town. People would come to check it out, and then ask what I was doing for the company. I’d tell them what sort of work I was doing, eg. database development, and then they’d say “oh I’ve got a database that I can’t get working. Do you mind just popping by and having a look for me?” So I would manage to win some more work just because I had something different that was interesting to look at. It was pure marketing heaven!

I used to do all of my work on my laptop, which included all of my client’s work, as well as my business plans, finances, marketing material etc. It was truly a business associate to me rather than just a laptop. Even when I’d travel all around the world I’d take it with me - which I must admit brought on some interesting looks from Airport Security Guards around the world, but again it was a talking point to them. When I’d be in some hotel room a million miles away from home, I’d set it up to communicate with the rest of the world and it was like a little part of home for me - which is quite important as traveling can get quite lonely at times.

So hopefully by now you’re starting to see just why I was so upset about losing a machine, but to me, it was a crucial part of how i built my business up from scratch, stayed sane while I was on the road, and always giving people something to talk about. It felt like a part of me had died.

BKLMGK ICT is designed to run in such a way that the only thing that would kill the company would be if I died, and since I was quite alive at the time, I set into motion one of our disaster recovery plans. We managed to get data off the old laptop so I was functional and I still had access to my emails, so I continued on doing a bit of work here and there while I tried to source a replacement for my Ferrari. Sadly they don’t make them anymore so I would have to look for another machine. You’d think it would be quite easy to find another “cool” laptop but nothing could be further from the truth. Everything out there looked boring, didn’t have enough performance, or simply wasn’t made anymore! Finally I found a HP DV4 laptop that I really liked so I contacted them and asked them what they could do for me. Unfortunately they didn’t make the DV4 anymore - how annoying!!! Anyway after hours and hours and hours of researching and visiting computer stores around Darwin, I decided on the new HP DV6 1130tx. The machine looks great, and performs brilliantly. By the way I just have to acknowledge Mick Cunningham from Harvey Norman Darwin because he’s an absolute champion in getting me brilliant deals. Thanks Mick!

So now the Ferrari sits in it’s “garage” on my desk and reminds me of the last four years of triumphs and hardships of my business while the new DV6 is my daily driver. Looking back on everything, it’s hard to think that a piece of machinery could cause so much emotion in a human being but when you think about it, is it really that far fetched? You might remember the supercomputer HAL from Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 - a Space Odyssey, or perhaps the talking car KITT from the 80’s tv show Knight Rider. Even though they were fake, they represented ideas to a whole bunch of young kids who were passionate about science fiction who would go on to becoming engineers to explore these ideas and turn them into reality. I wrote about this idea briefly here. These days technology is becoming more and more human and the best example of this is to look at the technology in motor vehicles today. There are cars these days that can park themselves, drive themselves, and the latest technological advance is of a car that can sense if you are having a heart attack, pull over on the road and then contact emergency services to let them know what is happening. Read about it here. So if we remember HAL and KITT who were totally useless but completley entertaining back in the 1980’s, we now start to see the transition of their entertainment value into something meaningful and real today.

With technology taking on more and more human characteristics everyday, is it a wonder that people can start to feel real emotions towards technology? As society progresses, technology will become more and more integrated into our lives and those entertaining stories that we see in the movies will one day too become reality. Let’s just hope for our sake that no one invents a computer called SkyNet...

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

P.S. Oh by the way, I’m MCing this Wednesday at the NTG’s E-Security event as part of National E-Security Week. This is the flyer here. Pop in and say hi...or wish me luck at being entertaining!!!

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Author: AJ Kulatunga

Category:

dream, build, inspire, technology, ferrari, laptop, hp, dv6, arthur c clarke, bmw heart attack car,