Andy Vasoyan

03/07/14

J518

Tech App Review

Dropbox, The Box of Dropping

The history of the 21st century, and in fact, all of mankind, is a case study in the ffectiveness of information transfer in determining all aspects of what me might classify as success, inasmuch as success might be defined as having achieved or accomplished a desired result in relation to an objectively stated/asserted goal, vis-a-vis the fact that one method of accomplishing the result is quantitatively or qualitatively more optimal. For example, one entity might wish to show strength, which is of course the ability to generate potential and kinetic energy gradient, and the ability to display that is a function of the ability of other entities to sense that in a universe based on a finite and theoretically stable set of physical laws. For a mammal like, say, a gorilla, to be “strong” it requires large musculature and an available store of energy in its body. This physically must manifest in visibly large muscles, but in order to SEE these muscles, an entity must be able perceive the light bouncing off the muscles via some sort of visual receiver. If you were a blind person, you would lack the information transfer capabilities to observe that gigantic gorilla musculature. That, for example, is a failure of information transfer, and all cause-effect decisions are, to greater or lesser extents, based on available information. Since all decisions in general are fundamentally cause-effect determinations, because otherwise it is simply random and not a “decision” per se, Q.E.D., information transfer effects every aspect of decision making.

Since decision making is important to people on the internet as well, people want to have access to it. How they do that is significantly variable, but one example is Dropbox. Dropbox is a San Fran based company, one of the most trafficked websites in the world, and one the most intuitive... up to a point. Setting up the dropbox is semi-easy, though not as easy as their intentionally white/clean/bare website would have you assume. The download and whatever is alright, it's just getting the options set up that takes a bit of investigating with its bars and tools and suchlike. It takes some fiddling, for sure, and it almost seems like Dropbox doesn't want you to fiddle, because it wants its UI to be streamlined and feel just like a regular folder on your desktop. If you don't want to fiddle and you're comfortable with taking what they give you, the standard settings gets the job done. The only annoying thing is that it is automatically on, which is useless if you're not updating constantly. You might be, though, but turning that off shouldn't be as much of a trek as it is. Other than that, it works exactly as intended. It's just a folder that syncs with other people. I'm not a huge fan, I wish I could be more involved, but very few people want to be more involved in their information transfer. It's a sensible and straightforward, if semi-handicapped, information transfer technology.