September 5th, 2012 2:54 PM by Gregg Mower
Every day we live with our automobiles, cell phones, computers, calculators, stop lights, clocks and just about anything that runs on electricity. We take the conveniences for granted until they no longer work. Technology has killed many industries but for every one industry it has killed it has created 10 more. Let’s face it we really don’t need black smiths to re-shoe our horses anymore, instead we go to a tire dealer to get new tires. You will be hard pressed to find a typewriter in an office environment today or a slide rule, which, by the way, got us to the moon and back. Yes things have changed, when I went to college in the early 80s the college had a computer but it occupied an entire wing of a building and that computer did not have the power that the one I write this blog has, by a long shot. Is it for the good? Of course it is, there just has to be more education in today’s world to get our children up to speed to operate all this stuff and fix it. In the financial world the industry was run on a ticker tape up until the 70s and 80s now the average person can look on their cell phone t o find the price of a stock without having to call a broker. When I first started in the mortgage business in the mid 80’s we did not have fax machines, in fact my first job in the industry was microfilming files, which entailed opening a file and taking a picture of each page in the file. We now scan files to store them. I remember fax machines only had thermal paper and we had to photocopy every fax we received so we would not lose the data to brown out.
In the mortgage industry today we have the ability to take a customer’s data self-entered on the internet import it securely, run credit, and get an automated approval al in the time it takes to eat lunch sometimes faster. Internally, mortgage companies are making great strides to move towards paperless, or as close as they can. Again, a typical loan file was copied on average 4 times through the life of the loan, now with digital storage and paperless underwriting many of those paper using steps have been eliminated. The downfall, to this is that it takes longer for an underwriter to go through a file unless she/he has 3 to 4 computer screens to compare data on. The cost of technology is high initially, however used correctly it should pay for itself time and time again. As I write this on my new computer that initially cost $1,300 then I needed to get another $1,500+ of software, now I know enough to install all of this, but had I not like most folks they would have to paid labor for someone to set up their computer. I can justify all this as I use the computer every part of everyday and run my entire company from one hub computer over a network and the internet. I was surprised, although how much easier it has gotten to assemble a system. I run 4 monitors and in the past I need to get a special video card and configure it all, now the computer came with enough ports to plug in 4 monitors without paying another $800+ dollars for a card and have someone install it, that would typically take a couple of days in learning curve.
We have come a long way and now my kids are 15 and 16 years old, I can only wonder what changes they will see over the next few decades. We as parents have to push our youth to learn more about technology than we ever had to. As usual please leave your comments and thoughts.