In the past, I had spent enormous amounts of time searching for a “perfect” theme, so when I put up my technology blog I decided to use a default WordPress theme and be done with it, however, last month Cody McKibben of ThrillingHeroics.com released his awesome (and free!) custom WordPress theme. Solid State Raam was in terrible need of a facelift, so I installed Cody’s theme and spent a little time tweaking it. The new theme seemed to breathe some motivation into writing for the blog, but there was still something missing: a vision.

Incidentally, the installation of the new theme coincided with another event. After explaining the WHOIS system to my dad one evening, I realized that I have a passion for helping others understand the digital world. The WHOIS system is a rather boring subject, even for a geek like me, but I nevertheless found myself explaining it to my dad with great enthusiasm. When I thought back to the other times where I had explained technology to people, I realized that I’ve always been enthusiastic and excited about it, no matter how boring or simple the subject was to me.

With this new understanding of my passion for helping others understand technology, a more clearly defined vision for my technology blog has emerged: A place to not only document my discoveries but to also help others understand the world of technology with which I am so familiar.

The world is filled with evildoers looking to take advantage of those who know very little about technology: identities are stolen, wallets are emptied, and valueless electronic goods are willingly purchased as a result of pure ignorance. Many people are fully aware of their ignorance to technology and, as a result, using technology creates intense frustration. I have often wondered how much more enjoyable the web would be for people if they knew how they could find anything with Google, or if understanding the simple difference between a web browser and an operating system would help prevent them from becoming victims to identity theft.

If I can help alleviate fear, frustration, and ignorance towards technology by simply providing a resource for people to educate themselves, then I will be helping to make the world a better place.

One of the guests, and most of the callers, were worried about offloading our memories and processing power to a machine. They feared it would turn us into organisms with a powerful brain but with nothing to do; they feared the repercussions would make us less human.

What I think they’re missing is that humans are inherently creative and curious. If we have more free space in our heads and more free time on our hands, we’re not going to waste it away with pointless activities (at least not for very long); we’ll gravitate towards being more creative and exploring areas of life that would otherwise have not been within reach.

The acceptance of mundane tasks and jobs as a part of our daily lives slows the progress of human civilization. While there are many socially, physically, and even culturally harmful effects of technology today, I think they can be directly attributed to the fact that this stuff is so damn new to us.

Humankind has never seen technology of today’s complexity, at least not in recorded history. We have no idea how to cope with the changes technology is bringing about and so, like a baby learning to walk, we’re bound to make mistakes and do things that make technology appear like the bad guy (and in many cases it is the bad guy; we just haven’t figured out how to use it properly yet).

Finding a balance and living in harmony with technology is what I believe we’ll eventually realize we must do. However, I don’t think that we’ve even begun to realize that we much search for that, let alone begun the search at all.

I am fully convinced that the iPhone, along with the developer tools Apple is providing, will lead the way for a new generation of mobile devices over the next few decades.

I don’t usually make such bold statements, especially given how fast technology changes and how quickly fads come and go, but the iPhone was different. It seemed like less of a phone and more of an enjoyable computing device; a toy for children, a toy and a smartphone for adults, and a beautiful piece of technology (as in looks) that people love to show off.

In Jeff Atwood’s latest blog post, he made similar statements that describe the revolutionary level at which the iPhone is changing the way we define mobile computing (talking about the latest iPhone 3GS):

A landmark, genre-defining product, no longer a mere smartphone but an honest to God fully capable, no-compromises computer in the palm of your hand.

We will look back on this as the time when “software” stopped being something that geeks buy (or worse, bootleg), and started being something that everyone buys, every day.

Jeff’s post gives a great overview of what’s amazing about the iPhone. He says to check back in fifteen to twenty years to see if he was right about his prediction on the historical impact the iPhone will have on computing. It looks like I’m one year ahead of you, Jeff. ;)