Basta may Tekno, Hapos!

Basta may Tekno, Hapos! –by Elijohn S. Alcaraz

It’s quite amazing how technology quickly caught up with us students of the CEA. After all, we’re called TEKNOs – Technology for short. Here and there you’d see Teknos fiddling with gadgets and every lighting and blinking thing of a jig, doing whatsoever from downloading music, enjoying games or finishing school requirements. Even the basic calculator is now upgraded; the famous fx-991ES by Casio with natural display and can quickly solve calculus and quadratic formulas. Almost everyone has it. And what about school papers? Almost everyone passes school papers typewritten. Still know anyone who does it by pen and hand? Exactly my point, right? Imagine the times when our professors were still students and they had to do everything manually, from plates to equations. God only knows what if the students of today be forced with the same experience. Even I can’t imagine it as I myself am very dependent to the blessings technology bring. Plates can be easily projected with design softwares such as AutoCad and Staad. Calculation and tabulations quickly solved via Excel. There’s even a course offered in our college that basically revolves around computers and gadgetry. Whatever you need to get things quickly done, it never hurts to put some digital aid to nudge things a bit – unless of course you’re doing it to “illegally” come up with answers in one of your morning pop quizzes, if you know what I mean.
Technology brings good will to us all if only we’d use it rightly. On the other hand, technology can likewise compromise us if we over depended on it. It’s a double edged blade. Like in my case one time, I didn’t do my requirements ahead of time because I was confident that with the aid of computers, I can get it done in a zip. But then when I was about to work on it the night before the deadline, a blackout came down all over the city and I didn’t know what to do about it. The blackout lasted all throughout the night, and I was able to come up with nothing. Hence, passed nothing. Luckily our professor was kind enough to give an extension, so I lived.
This was just a simple example of how unaware we are sometimes of our over dependent on technology. I just hope that nobody out there gets a harder realization than what I had. Of course it’s still best to learn the fundamentals and work on it first before fully shifting to computer-aided work. Work on solid ground first, as we engineers always say. And also, a little exercise won’t hurt. Sitting in front of a computer all day is not so healthy too, we shouldn’t give all the exercise to our fingers and wrists alone. So every once in awhile, flex, stretch and pump our bodies to give us the exercise we need. And most of all, keep on learning. For technology doesn’t stand still and linger. It expands and upgrades itself to a far more advanced state, so as users we also should need to keep ourselves open to the possibilities and just go forward with technology. Keep it fun, and in no time learning wouldn’t be so hard after all.
There’s nothing in here that you don’t already know, it’s just a simple reminder that we should be the ones using technology, and not the other way around. So if sometimes you find yourself struggling over something, ask around. Because sometimes we can be also unaware that there’s already something created out there that exactly suits our need. Because who knows, with technology the possibilities are limitless!