My Biggest Flattener

There are many different flatteners for the world, but depending on your age the ways you were affected will vary. Flatteners can be defined as the inventions and break throughs that made normal, everyday activities easier for the population. These once new, innovative ideas, though, become old news, quickly, with the constant updating of technology.

Being in the world for two decades, I find it safe to say that technology has changed quick a bit along with the way that the world operates. In elementary school, computer classes were required, but for a while we focused on typing and applications for typing reports and essays. Later on in my education, computer classes became more focused on ways to find information by using the internet. This was new, though. For that reason, my biggest flattener was the informing flattener.

Presentation on the informing flattener can be seen here. 

For a while, during my early childhood education, if we needed to gather information for school related activities we either used our textbooks or encyclopedias. Students at my school attended more than one library lesson on how to use an encyclopedia system. Not only did we use encyclopedias to find information, but we were also required to use a certain amount of books when researching for a report or project. As I got older, though, the internet and its resources became more of a focus. Instead of having library lessons on using encyclopedias we began to have lessons on how to find reliable research information. We were even taught how to create our own websites. We also learned about search engines like google, dog pile and mamma. Such knowledge changed our lives drastically.



A few years after being taught how to find reliable information we were also taught how to use online databases. These were online collections of information from books, magazines, newspapers and other print sources. It became apparent that the need for paper resources was decreasing especially since many of these resources were now available through the web. Now, almost everything revolves around the internet. I experienced the change from the prominent use of books to the overtaking of search engines. Not only was this change something different, but also something that contributed to the ease of finding information. There is no question that books are dying out and being replaced by e-readers. The internet has definitely dominated the technological world especially since many new advances require the internet to take advantage of full capabilities. This flattener, by far, had the biggest impact on my generation so far. It is enough to make you wonder what other technological advances are in the back pocket of the technological world's future.