The Computer Zone

The week long series of “Technology in our Lives” is coming to an end soon. This is the second last post and I’m already kind of sad it’s coming to an end. Today I’m looking at how technology has changed the way we entertain ourselves.

In many ways, we still use the same form of entertainment as we used to. We still listen to the radio, watch TV programs, go to sporting events and enjoy other activities. Technology has changed a few of the forms of entertainment (including adding new ways). Surfing the web is a fairly new way to entertain ourselves, long distance travel is more readily accessible and even old things have been improved (TV, radio, video quality).

Lets look a little more deeply into a few of these things to see how technology has changed them.

The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web was essentially created in 1991 by Cern. This basically allowed for people at home to connect to web servers world wide. With the development of the WWW came a new form of entertainment called “Web Surfing”. For those of you who don’t know what web surfing is, it’s basically the action of going through a number of websites for entertainment purposes.

As the WWW matured and more websites were created the possibility for spending hours upon hours of playing games, watching videos and talking online increased. Popular sites such as YouTube, Addicting Games and Penny Arcade can suck hours out of a persons day. The World Wide Web is definitely a great form of entertainment.

Long Distance Travel
Technology has changed the way we get around from place to place. Because of this change, people have changed their traveling habits. Traveling longs distances just wasn’t possible a couple hundred years ago. If you wanted to take a vacation you would stay close to your home.

Because of the fact that transportation technology has changed to allow for people to travel longer distances, this means that people can enjoy different cultures. If a person gets bored of their local entertainment they could jump on a plain and enjoy something else. This change in technology has also changed the make-up of local communities. These communities are changing from a once predominantly single culture structure to a more multi-cultural structure. This is also affecting the different ways people seek entertainment within their own local communities.

TV’s and Videos
Remember way back to May of 1977, it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The original Star Wars movie was released and everyone was amazed with George Lucas and his special effects. Star Wars ep. 4 was the leader in technology, it featured things that nobody had ever seen and movie tickets proved it. Fast forward to May of 2005 and the release of Star Wars ep. 3, the final movie of the six. Revenge of the Sith featured special effects that greatly surpassed those of the original. Technology in the movies has changed the way movies look, the way their produced and even the way their viewed.

Movie theaters a long time ago played one movie at a time. They could only play one movie because they only had one screen. We now have multi screened movie theaters with as many as 50 screens. This means that you can watch one movie, get out of your seat and than watch another.

Technology has definitely changed the way we entertain ourselves. Many forms of entertainment is now easier to get and much more entertaining.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 11:00 am and is filed under Tech In Our Lives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.