Technology Essays - American People Of German Descent, Apple Inc.

Technology There isn't hardly anybody around who can say their lives haven't been influenced by computers. Computers have all but taken over society as we know it. Everywhere you look, computers have greatly improved our lives. It can be as simple as going through a carwash, a computer processes the information that we feed it and adjusts the machine accordingly to give us the particular wash we paid for. Computers also play an extremely complicated role in one of the things that everybody uses in their everyday lives, our cars. Most people don't realize how much our cars have been taken over by technology, until they get the bill after one of these computers go out. Just about everything in a new car is controlled by a computer, a computer will read and recognize your driving patterns and adjusts how and when the transmission should shift from gear-to-gear so that you, as the driver, will get maximum performance from your car. In some vehicles, a computer will adjust how high the car rides from the ground. It lowers the car at highway speeds to make it more aerodynamic which will give you better gas mileage and makes the car easier to handle at these high speeds. The latest computer technology is an on-board navigational computer that will direct the driver into using the fastest and most efficient way to get to the destination. It will plan your route around any construction, traffic jams, and even inclement weather. If and when these cars break down, a mechanic will simply ask the car's on-board computer what is wrong, rather than having to go through a series of complicated troubleshooting tests. As I have clearly stated, computers have greatly improved something that most of us use every day. Another advantage of the computer that until recently I was unfamiliar with is the role of the computer in the workplace. I have worked at various jobs in my short existence on this earth. For the most part, the most technologically advanced any of them were was merely punching prices into a cash register, hardly a state-of-the-art process by any means. Most of the jobs I have worked at were more labor-oriented jobs, so I suppose that is why this is kind of a change for me. These days I wait tables at a local bar and grill. I have worked at restaurants like this before, but none of those places were dependent on a computer like this one is. For example, at my old job, when we took orders for drinks we scribbled it down on a sheet of paper and then threw it at the bartender along with another ten people so he could try and figure out just what the heck was written down. This process seemed to take forever. Now all I have to do is go to the computer, press a couple of buttons, and voila, the bartender gets a clear printout of what needs to be made. And with any luck, the drinks should be ready by the time I get to the bar. Needless to say I like the method of using the computer much better than the old way of writing everything down. This has also solved a lot of problems of the same kind in the kitchen, also. As having the experience of being a cook at one time, there was nothing that got on my nerves more than trying to read the handwriting of someone who had to take an order in a room filtering out more than 150 people making noise while trying to jot everything down as fast as they can. As you can probably imagine, this turns into a lose-lose situation for the people trying to work through all of this. The cook is mad at the server for not being able to write the order in plain English. The server is mad at the cook for always being so critical and not worrying about themselves. Eventually the person who is effected most by all of this is the customer. What happens is the cook finally just doesn't care about the order anymore and doesn't prepare a good meal, or the server gets ticked off at the cook and ends up taking out their frustration on the customer who doesn't get the quality of service that they deserve. That is a whole bunch of problems that came out of just one tiny little detail, that being not writing the order clearly enough. At my current job, when a food order is taken, the same process