It's a small world...

I think that it's one thing to know intellectually all of the neat things that technology can do and another to see it in action.

It will never cease to amaze me how interconnected the world is through the Internet, and the things that high speed data make possible.  Talked to a friend in Australia last night via video chat over a lagless g-mail video connection.  Her sunlit balcony and cheery countenance was transported to our late night gathering as if it was a phone call to a neighbor across the street. We could see the skyscrapers of a distant city and hear the stock cars of the Australian grand prix roar around their endless circuits in the background.  A sense of life and humor transported across oceans and continents on a piece of fiberglass the thickness of a strand of hair to sit with us around the kitchen table and share our conversation like old times.  While an oversimplification of the engineering and science that makes it possible its the spirit that matters anyway.

A great deal of conversation yesterday revolved around other examples of the new found uses of technlogy. While we are all a little wary of the overreaching and all encompassing nature of technology in the modern world (I still keep paper journals and am a crusading advocate of paper snail-mail letters) we are still in awe of its potential applications.   I encounter other examples in my professional life.  Projects are taking place in my office right now to map the environmental hazards of neighborhoods and overlay them with census maps of income levels, crime and other statistics.  All of this data is available real time, uploaded by groups of high-school students from hand held GPS units and portable computers. 

Google can consistently predict the next location of a flu outbreak days before the CDC simply by indexing searches for flu and correlating them with locations of the computers performing the search.  Maps of other outbreaks are made simply by indexing news stories in local papers.  The city of Mumbai tracks its garbage men on google earth to make sure they are doing their jobs properly in the jumble of the million person slums. This year they will be able to track the flood waters of the monsoon in real time with a map that updates every time people text in that the water has reached their doorstep.  This will allow for better allocation of emergency resources and more organized evacuation plans.

It's exciting to live in a time where the possibilities of technology truly seem to be bounded only by the imagination.  Now all we have to do is imagine!  And communicate, whether it be with our neighbors or the other side of the earth.

The cutting edge...

I've come to the determination that working at a university (or other academic setting) has a lot of advantages over other places of employment.

Not the least of which is that even when doing mundane tasks related to being an administrative assistant it never fails to be different and often more than a little strange.

A few examples:

One of the professors in my department is on a trip to London... not to have any sort of business meeting, or to sightsee, but to offer testimony before the house of Lords in Parliament about environmental health exposures on soldiers. Other members of the department have repeatedly testified before various congressional committees here in the US. The scope of projects that are routinely worked on range from the office itself, to neighborhoods across the city, to huge global research studies.

And these are some very smart people... Creating mathematical models to improve public health, monitor the cleanup of some of the worlds most toxic dumping grounds and generally go around using lots of big words. Dr's of all types abound. Its hard not to sometimes feel overwhelmed.

Yet my favorite moments almost always involve technology, because as smart as these people all are when it comes to computers, they're still stuck in my parents (or in some cases grandparents) generation. They know what's going on, but when it comes to change it's like watching a glacier move...

Which is why I was surprised when one of them came up to me today and asked if I was on Twitter (I'm not... so far...) This caused a moment of reflection. I was beaten to the technological punch by a 65 year old college professor who's previous technological experience was limited to e-mail and the occasional blog post. I think that's ok though. (I'm on facebook and he's not HA HA HA) One does not have to ride every popular wave yes? (oh no! I'm starting to sound like my parents).

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the ensuing conversation about all the pros and cons of various social networking sites and their possible applications for the advancement of global and public health and coordination of intra-office parties with the doctoral students. How's that for an office environment? Hmm.. Maybe I'll start twittering after all!

**SMILES**