Sponsored video: Do you ever ask how your digital device works?

Asking questions is part of any editors job. Who, what, where and how are the tools of the trade for any journalist or editor who needs to understand how anything works.

For instance, I visited a company today which specialises in making data centre cooling equipment. It is big business. It is an industry which few people see. But, most people who use the internet rely on without knowing it.

Without data centre cooling, you would have no Facebook (one of their customers, in fact) or Google. These companies have data centres, massive data centres, which host the information you share. If they are not kept cool, their websites and apps would not work.

But, did you ever ask yourself how Facebook or Google handles all that information? Probably not. Why would you? If it works, what is the point in knowing how it works?

Writing on the fly

Another aspect of being an editor is that, often, you can find yourself having to submit copy to include in the next issue on the fly.

Take today, after the meeting in the morning with the manufacturer, I was the passenger in my colleague's car. Rather than waiting to get back to the office to submit my 'Editor's introduction', which had to be in the next day, I took out my tablet PC and started to type.

When I finished the copy, I emailed the document from my tablet PC to my editorial coordinator in the office. Yet, I gave no thought to how the tablet PC worked. It just did what I told it to do.

Intel asks 'How?'

That is why Intel's latest campaign is interesting. They were trying to find out if passers-by on the street knew anything about their digital devices. Intel asked: 'What Makes Your Favourite Computing Devices Work?'

Few people could explain.

Intel showed these people a '2 in 1' tablet PC and laptop device. Next, they showed them what made the device work. People seemed quite surprised.

Watch the video below to see what some of them said.

Although this video is a sponsored, these are all my own thoughts!