Offsider Blog

Nathan Pearce

I intend to use this space to document stories, or historical technical fixes that I either come across, or I create. Hopefully, this can be a useful resource for others.

Perhaps, you don't know.. but If you're on a Cellular service provider that resells "AT&T Wireless", you can not port your telephone number from them, directly to AT&T! This kind of complexity in our world is unncessary, and goes to show why technology and communication is often withheld from the average person, requiring experts to get you through to the desired result.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
- Arthur C. Clarke.

Of course, this isn't how it is supposed to be, but you have to admit, take any 2010's technology back to the eighties, and it would be magic.

• Portable internet devices that can make telephone calls and query the knowledge of the universe in your pocket?
  

• Self Driving automobiles doing safe lane changes and speed control on a highway at 65 mph?
  

• (Home) Television screens as large as 85 inches, and only a few inches deep?
  

All of these things seem crazy if you put them in the context of the 1980's, let alone anytime before then. So, of course, its a technologists job to make these things accessible and life improving to the person who comes along to use them. That's my guiding principle. Technology assists to enhance lives, not make it more difficult. So, as I come across things that are more difficult than they need to be, I hope to document them here.