The Importance of Technology in My Life

With technology, we have the tools available to us that make it easier to manage our day
to day lives and exchange valuable information to our friends and family and other people,
almost instantaneously. Back many decades ago however, these tools weren’t available
to mankind and he would have had to go through a process of first discovering the ability
and then evolving enough to turn it into a tool we could all use.

Take the telephone for example. It started off as a most basic and simple idea but then
went on to become one of the most main technological tools we use in our modern lives
today. So much so that for many of us, we simply couldn’t live our lives the same way
without it. Take away the telephone and you’ll basically be slowing man down to the point
where he wont be able to operate and manage his or her life as effectively.

And that’s what technology is and how it’s so important to us today. Technology is
basically harnessing the tools, systems and techniques that are used to help us with
problem solving or just making our lives better and easier to live in some way. In fact,
technology has played a very significant role in how we live in the world and how we
interact with everything around us in the environment today.

And since technology has developed so much, from computer technology to mobile
technology, it’s helped us to bridge the gap that people all around the world have today.
So much so that there is no longer a void between people of one country and another.
That void gets smaller and smaller as our technology evolves over time and at the speed
in which it increases, we can only assume that there will be no void at all one day.

Surely enough, technology has helped us in many ways to conquer and overcome those
communication barriers before. And while it does help mankind to progress and evolve,
it can also have a destructive element to it too. Since through technology, we are able to
develop ever more sophisticated weapons like the atomic bomb and that could go on to
be detrimental to the existence and continuation of mankind altogether.

But despite the threat that technology could one day be mans downfall and wipe us all off
the face of the earth, technology also has a positive affect on the development of societies
around the world too. Some such technology helps some developing societies to have a
stronger infrastructure in place which means better transport, better schools, hospitals
and other municipal services as well as access to health services too.

Although the development and increase in technology can have an adverse affect on our
planet and environment, such as through all of the carbon output that comes as a by-
product from creating and using that technology (such as the electric used to power our
computers and mobile devices etc or even the cars we drive around in), it still goes on to
have a lot of positive benefits all round too!

Technology is an integral and important part of my life. Like most I use technology such as
computers and the Internet to complete schoolwork, projects, and to conduct research. Technology
helps to speed up the learning process for students like myself because it creates a more efficient
learning environment in many ways. For example I can write this blog post much faster than I
could if I were to hand-write it. And of course without the Internet I wouldn’t be able to view my
peers posts until I attended class on Wednesday. But technology is also an important part of my
life for reasons other than just education. Technology is also important to me for enjoyment
purposes. As a musician I use technology to create and record music. I enjoy experimenting with
electronic keyboards and synthesizers to create new and interesting sounds and I use my computer
to record and edit these tracks. Technology is also important to me for communication purposes.
Moving six hours away from home as an eighteen-year-old is certainly a daunting experience, but
with cell phones and built in video cameras on computers my family and friends are just a click
away. For all these reasons technology is invaluable to me and without it my life would
unquestionably be very different.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovers 'Icarus', the farthest star ever seen
The Hubble Space Telescope of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has
discovered the farthest star ever seen, named Icarus.The enormous blue star is located over
halfway across the universe.

Washington: The Hubble Space Telescope of the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration (NASA) has discovered the farthest star ever seen, named Icarus.The enormous

blue star is located over halfway across the universe.

The star's light has taken nine billion years to reach the Earth as it is so far away. It appears to us

as it did when the universe was about 30 per cent of its current age.

Normally, the star would be too faint to view, even with the world's largest telescopes. But,

through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing that tremendously amplifies the star's feeble

glow, astronomers were able to pinpoint this faraway star and set a new distance record.

Patrick Kelly, who led the study as a postdoctoral fellow University of California at Berkeley,

said "This is the first time we're seeing a magnified, individual star."

"You can see individual galaxies out there, but this star is at least 100 times farther away than the

next individual star we can study, except for supernova explosions," said Kelly, who is now at

the University of Minnesota in the US.

Gravitational lensing occurs when forces of gravity from massive cluster of galaxies acts as a

natural lens in space, bending and amplifying light.

Sometimes light from a single background object appears as multiple images. The light can be

highly magnified, making extremely faint and distant objects bright enough to see.
In the case of Icarus, a natural 'magnifying glass' is created by a galaxy cluster called MACS

J1149+2223.

Located about 5 billion light-years from Earth, this massive cluster of galaxies sits between the

Earth and the galaxy that contains the distant star.

By combining the strength of this gravitational lens with Hubble's exquisite resolution and

sensitivity, astronomers can see and study Icarus.

The team - including Jose Diego of the Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria in Spain, and Steven

Rodney of the University of South Carolina in the US - dubbed the star Icarus, after the Greek

mythological character who flew too near the Sun on wings of feathers and wax that melted. Its

official name is MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1.

Much like Icarus, the background star had only fleeting glory as seen from Earth. It momentarily

skyrocketed to 2,000 times its true brightness when temporarily magnified.

Models suggest that the tremendous brightening was probably from the gravitational

amplification of a star, similar in mass to the Sun, in the foreground galaxy cluster when the star

moved in front of Icarus.

The star's light is usually magnified by about 600 times due to the foreground cluster's mass.

Detecting the amplification of a single, pinpoint background star provided a unique opportunity

to test the nature of dark matter in the cluster.

Dark matter is an invisible material that makes up most of the universe's mass.
By probing what is floating around in the foreground cluster, scientists were able to test one

theory that dark matter might be made up mostly of a huge number of primordial black holes

formed in the birth of the universe with masses tens of times larger than the Sun.

The results of the test disprove that hypothesis, because light fluctuations from the background

star, monitored with Hubble for 13 years, would have looked different if there were a swarm of

intervening black holes.

Solar System News
July 21, 2018

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 SOLAR SYSTEM

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The Ten Tenets of Effective Communication

Both you and your audience benefit when your communication adheres to these tenets

Effective communication is about connecting with your audience. It’s about your audience
getting your message as you intended. It begins with understanding who your audience is
and how they can best ‘hear’ your message, then using this information to craft and deliver
your message. This is simply another way of saying that your message, whether written,
verbal, or visual, must be audience-centered—focused around the needs of your audience.
Put yet another way, communication is less about you and all about them.

Effective communication is simple and clear, focuses around a single idea, and ultimately
achieves the results you desire.

To be most effective, your communication must adhere to these ten tenets. Effective
communication is:

 Honest,
 Clear,
 Accurate,
 Comprehensive,
 Accessible,
 Concise,
 Correct,
 Timely, and
 Well designed.
 It builds goodwill too.
Let’s start with a discussion of the first two and then continue with the remaining eight
over my next two blog entries.

Honest. The rock-bottom, most steadfast principle of any communication is honesty.

Honesty builds rapport with your audience, and in this age of social media, a strong rapport
is vital to success.

Anything short of the truth can cause adverse consequences for both you and your
audience. In extreme cases, not telling the entire truth can cause physical harm. Once your
audience sees that you are shaving off parts of the truth, not telling the entire story, or
worse, distorting the message with misinformation, your communication is doomed.

Blurring the truth of bad news is all too common. In the face of unsettling news, honesty
can be disarming simply because it is unexpected.
Any kind of misinformation causes your audience to not only question the validity of your
present message, but also your past and future messages. Misleading your audience can
cause faulty decision making (such as investing when divesting is more judicious).
Dishonest information can easily result in litigation and costly settlements.

These repercussions are some of the many reasons why you must maintain the highest
level of integrity in all your communication. But there is a positive reason as well:

Being honest is the right thing to do.

Clear. Clarity enables your audience to get your message as you intended. And isn’t that the
whole point.

Instructions especially benefit from clarity. Who among us hasn’t struggled through
frustrating assembly instructions, or the less-than-accurate steps for using software
features? And yet it’s this lack of clarity that increases traffic to a company’s technical
support lines with the corresponding increase in costs.

Clarity is greatly enhanced when communication focuses on a single meaning and message.
Clear communication means your audience doesn’t have to guess or fill in the blanks or
even ponder your meaning.
The Ten Tenets of Effective Communication (Part 2 of 3)

You can create enduring relationships with your readers when you adhere to these tenets

To be most effective, your communication must focus on the needs of your audience. When
you write, understand your audience, and make sure they will receive and act on the
information in the manner you intended. Toward this end, we continue our discussion of
the ten tenets of effective communication, focusing on the next four tenets:

 Accurate
 Comprehensive
 Accessible
 Concise
Accurate. Get your facts straight. Even the slightest inaccuracy subjugates believability and
can bring the contents of an entire document into question.

Inaccuracies can annoy and perplex an audience, especially when they know otherwise.
And keep your own biases at bay when citing facts; remain objective. Compelling
information presented accurately can still raise eyebrows; there is no need to overstate.

An occasional misstated fact can be tolerated, but attention to detail in this all important
area is well worth the effort. The little bit of extra research that corrects a distortion goes a
long way toward creating authoritative communication.

In a presentation, I once used the quote “Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth
shut”, which had been attributed to author Robert Newton Peck. When I called him to
verify this attribution, Mr Peck set the record straight. He told me, “Samuel Johnson said
that.”

Accuracy is ethical.

Comprehensive. Thorough communication answers all questions, provides all the

necessary information in sufficient detail, and enables your audience to assess and act with
confidence.

Oftentimes, being comprehensive means describing background information so that your

audience has a foundation on which to consider the heart of your communication. Don’t
make assumptions about what an audience knows or about their background. An audience
must be able to paint the entire picture of your message, and it’s your job to give them the
tools to paint that picture. A complete, self-contained explanation and discussion enables
your audience to proceed safely, to be efficient with their time, and effective with their
efforts.
History also benefits from comprehensiveness. Consider how important detailed minutes
from crucial meetings can be, especially minutes from Board of Directors’ meetings.

Accessible. There is just too much to read—emails, memos, reports, blogs, web links,
articles, magazines, books—it can all be so overwhelming. With this plethora of
information, readers skim, diving in only when deemed important, interesting, or useful.
Few read sequentially, from beginning to end. Besides, attention spans are short. Make the
most of these methods by helping your reader easily access what you say in your writing.

Unless a simple word or two will suffice, write descriptive titles and headings using
phrases or sentences. This separates your document into small, independent sections that
are easily digestible. A reader should be able to skim your headings and get the essence of a
document.

For longer documents, don’t force your reader to flip or scroll unnecessarily—create a
table of contents or summary links at the beginning. Avoid useless links as well.

Concise. What we choose to do with our time is the essence of who we are. We are all busy.
With the myriad possibilities, choosing what we do with our time can be a significant
challenge.

So, to help a reader select your document to read, it must be concise and to the point. Tell
people up front what they are about to read and how they can benefit. For example, this
position paper adheres to this tenet in its two-line heading.

Write simply. Convey a lot of information economically. Excise unnecessary phrases.

Replace wordiness with short words. Eliminate tangential information. Use simple
grammatical forms. A good edit shortens a document by up to 20 percent: 1,000 words
down to 800.

Mark Twain once apologized for the length of a letter saying he hadn’t taken the time to
edit it. Learn from him—edit. Take time so that your reader doesn’t have to.