Databases with Joel Larson

We were lucky enough to get a visit from Joel Larson a teacher at the University of Washington who knows a great deal about databases. Now I didn't know anything about databases before this presentation, like I didn't know anything at all. All i knew is database was a word, and it had something to do with computers. So as you can tell, I learned a lot from Joel. First of a database stores data. Thats its job. The coolest fact I learned was a database that stored data for a database is called a metadatabase. There is pretty much three different types of data, unstructured, semi-structured and structured data. Databases store data for structured data. I'm really not interested in knowing how the other two types of data are stored.  And yes I am saying data a lot. Basically if there is information on anything, theres gonna be a database. I especially loved learning about the Information Wars in the 1960s, mainly because i'm a big history nerd. The Information Wars was when manufacturers and grocery stores started competing over how many products they needed. With the bar code, and a database to store this information grocery stores where finally able to figure out how much product they actually needed, and could tell that to the manufacturer. I thought that was a pretty neat fact, and its all thanks to the incredibly complex database.

Disitermedition

With the emergence of the World Wide Web, a lot of jobs became disintermediated. Or in other words the internet cut the middle man, the middle man being thousand of jobs. The most obvious one is travel agents! There used to be a huge calling for travel agents. Just like Toula's job in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Their job used to collect all the necessarily information one needed in order to travel out of the country. Like the plane ticket, how to rent a car, what hotel to stay out, even restaurant reservations! It was a pretty huge calling back then, but thanks to the internet, a bunch of sites can now take care of all that for you. Another job is a Tax preparer, or someone who would help you figure out all those complicated questions when you file your taxes. Now you can go online answer a few questions and your taxes will be filed.  A lot of jobs have changed because of the world wide web, but the biggest question is where did all these people go? Well the most reasonable answer is they went online too. Many probably had to go back to school to get the necessary requirements to do their jobs online. I assume some had to get another job, probably in a similar field. And maybe some, like Toula, found the man of their dreams and work wasn't a necessity anymore. Regardless the reason, thanks to the world wide web, we don't get to interact with these people any longer.