Tech Voyagers Guide to Innovation

 In a pervious blogging post, I talked about the founders of GovWorks. They were a company that had multi-million dollar deals that went bankrupt in a little over a year. During their time, they had a series of failures that lead to their demise. One of those failures was when robbers broke into their corporation, and stole computers and important files. This was during a time where the internet was still new, and cyber crime wasn't as much of an issue - like it is today.  With the internet as large and popular it is today, it should come as no surprise that millions of cyberattacks occur daily. Some of the most popular attacks are: Phishing, Malware, and Ransomware. Phishing is when messages are sent from false people or companies with a purpose of stealing information from a victim. Malware is a dangerous software program designed to cause harm to a victims computer and steal information. Ransomware is like malware, where if downloaded onto a victims computer, it will block ...

 Its important to understand how innovation can be both a good and bad thing based on the situation and context.  To do that, we need to talk about what the World Wide Web did to society when it was released to the public. The word we are going to focus on is "disintermediation". Disintermediation is when middlemen are removed, letting producers and consumers deal with each other directly. When the World Wide Web became a public commodity, it allowed individuals to create spaces for consumers to directly access information about products, services, or opportunities without relying on others to help them. This was good for the consumers, but a terrible situation for those who relied on others needing help.  Another phenomenon occurred called "convergence of technologies ," where multiple technological innovations came together to create a type of business or product that normally wouldn't be possible to make. A great example of this is iTunes, which came about be...

If you are like me, a mid to late 90's baby, you probably don't remember the dot com bust that happened in the early 2000's. For most generations born from 1994 and above, the internet was simply just there. Forever a part of our lives, forever existing within our realm of being. The internet hasn't been around as long as we might think, and much like trends come and go, the web also had its moment of fame. Instead of it dying out completely, it had what we call a "bust". Some of the best lessons in life are through hardship and failures, and the dot com bust is a fantastic lesson to learn when it comes to innovation. I was first introduced to the dot com bust by one of my Professors for my Technical Communications major. He had fun and colorful slides that matched the energy of what the dot com bust was about. See, each slide was designed to mimic the craziness of the dot com era, where tons of websites were being created, investors were throwing money, and e...

 So you have a great idea. Be it digital, physical, or a type of service, everything has to start somewhere. There's a couple of routes you can take, whether you choose to start a small business or get investors for a large company, you always need to start at the beginning. Sometimes, your idea becomes a startup - a new business starting operations that has the opportunity to grow to great proportions. But I am not here to tell you what the best way to begin a startup, rather, I am recommending to research past companies that tried to start and failed. The best way to learn what not to do is to experience, but fortunately for us, we have the internet to learn about failures before we experience them. One really good example of a bad startup is from a documentary directed by Jehane Noujaim and Chris Hegedus. The documentary is appropriately titled "Startup.com", and takes you on a journey with the company called govWorks.  I am going to spoil much of the documentary as I ...

If you're a student in College, Highschool, and even Middle School, you have more than likely been told to never use AI while completing school work. In most cases, you have probably been threatened to never use AI or some repercussion might ensue. This has been, and currently is, the normal procedure of AI in 2024. But things are starting to change. A famous quote by Upton Sinclair states "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." In the age of AI, we have seen the impact it has on the workforce with significant job loss. Rachel Curry addresses this issue within her article, "Recent data shows AI job losses are rising, but the numbers don’t tell the full story." Just as the title hints, the article starts with the same unoriginal story of AI causing job loss, but at the end, she points out that AI has only replaced aspects of a job. Though the scope of the job is replaceable by AI, this has allow...

When it comes to innovation, the beginning stage is often addressing a problem. Addressing the problem could be coming up with a product for people to use, or creating an app that supports users in a specific area. There are so many solutions that one can create to address a problem, but we often struggle to find inspiration, or even know what is or isn't a problem. Sometimes, the problem has already been addressed by numerous other innovators with similar products that just seem to rip off of each other. Sounds a bit rude right? But in all actuality, many great businessmen and innovators build their ideas off of others creations. As I was traveling to LA Comic-Con to sell our business wares, I happened to book an AirBnB under a gentleman who was the CEO of a rather large software company. Without giving away too many details, he said something that has stuck with me till this day, "You dont have to be first, you just have to do it better".  So you might not be the best a...

Have you ever read an article about a brand new invention recently created? Browsed the web on the latest technological discoveries, or religiously followed certain social media accounts for the latest computer reviews? Most of us browse the web without a single thought of how it operates in the background, or how we have access to all this information. When it comes to gathering knowledge that might lead us to the next break-through discovery, it is important to remember how we are able to access such a wealth of information. Enter the internet. Perhaps the greatest innovation to ever be created, and something that allows all future innovators access to amazing amounts of information and knowledge. The internet, to put it simply, is a network of interconnect computers that allow people to share data and communicate with each other. Not to be confused with the Web, or the World Wide Web, which is a vast amount of webpages and websites that allow users (you and I) to interact with, like...