(Today’s post is contributed by Jim Pearson, a senior, doing his undergraduate work in Information Technology at the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Jim is presently working as a coop at Cazbah in the IT department.)

When I was growing up, my Dad instilled in me early on a love for technology and all things computer related. He has always had a passion for it himself and thankfully, he passed that torch on to me.

Over the course of my years, I have seen technology change and develop at an exponential rate. This of course has impacted the way the normal person does business in a vast amount of ways. When we got our first family computer, it was (by standards then) a moderate machine. If memory serves it was a Pentium 166 with 32 Megabytes of ram.

Now though, you could buy that computer for around the cost of a dinner at any restaurant. Its mind boggling to think just how far we have come in the past 20 years with computers. Just the other day, I was in the kitchen talking to my parents and my phone rang. I checked it and casually replied “Oh, I have an email”. My Mom looked at me like I had grown a third arm. She couldn’t believe I could get email on my phone. I told her all the other things it could do (email, texting, Internet browsing) and her only reply was “It still makes calls, right?”. We laughed but shes right, my phone now is more of a computer than our family PC was for 10 years.

That’s not it either, as computers become more advanced so do the things we do with them. I can remember a time…a time before Facebook, before Twitter, and when Myspace was just starting out. If someone said the word “blog” you thought they were speaking some other language. In such a short span of time, the Internet (along with computers) has completely changed. People are able to stay in contact with just about anyone in the world. Companies are able to reach out to customers they were previously denied. Nothing, seemingly, is off limits with access to the Internet.

The biggest obstacle is actually knowing how to use the technology available to you, and using it to your advantage. It can be extremely daunting to someone unfamiliar with it, and that can breed hesitation to try new things. The best advice I can give someone who is in that position is to simply ask. Find someone who knows about it and sit them down. Once you know the pros and cons, then make a decision, don’t let fear of the unknown or untested scare you.

Technology has changed drastically in the past 10 years, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Embrace it. Adapt and grow with it because as it continues to change (and believe me, it will), the structure of the world and business around you will change with it.

Are you up for it?