Since I was
young, technology has helped me encounter new dimensions in my world. Although
I was born B.C. (Before Computers), television has not had the same
impact on my life as the Internet has. In short, I think
that I have skyrocketed into a new universe since the dinosaur
age. L.O.L. Strangely enough, I
could envision the networks of networks in 1984 before the
Internet was a reality for most people. I remember sending an
article to a Minneapolis paper with the idea for the Internet and never
receiving any feedback. I had just
come back from Bolivia and was passionate about bringing the people
of the world together in new more productive and amiable ways. Naturally,
the rest of my family in those years thought that I was nuts.
Going
to Miami Dade College in the nineteen
nineties, I noticed how internal computer
systems like System One were being used by travel
agents to book travel arrangements; it was the
age of D.A.S or shall I say using codes to communicate data
via internal networks on drab grey screens. Little
did I dream at that point that the neuronal universes
of geeks, scientists, businessmen, engineers, and people big and small all over
the world were vibrating much faster than I could imagine and that
System One would soon become obsolete and be
replaced by a cosmic network of
globalization that would change reality as I knew it.
In 1996, I
purchased my first used personal computer in a shop in North Miami Beach. In
those days, it took more than thirty minutes to get on the Internet. (Dial
Up was always a gigantic pain and Websites were poorly constructed without data
base, interesting content, video, audio and secure e-commerce
systems.)
Nevertheless, I
knew that the Internet was starting to transform the world as I knew. I
experimented with a Sony Vaio computer and set up an online music business
known as Star Andes Music Travel in 1998, I wrote plans for an
alternative online university when I was in Costa Rica, suggested
a job data base idea to a local non-profit group while in Miami, and wrote
President Clinton about the creation a White House Web site. I
eventually got a job with Royal Caribbean in which my Internet and people
skills came in handy economically and my family and friends around the world
accepted me (Oh, the miracle of Facebook, Skype, Google online bill pay, Internet research, crowd
sourcing etc.)
Nevertheless,
my undergraduate studies at the University of Oregon have not
satisfied my desire to stop the flaws and injustices created
by our current technology of human polarization or given me the money that I
need to pay for my education. As a graduate
student in the Oregon Sustainability Program, I know
that I must explore new corners of the quantum universe. We must
discover how to use artificial intelligence and quantum computers ethically
to solve complicated global problems. Fear
of technology is not an option!
