We began the long awaited Spring symposium “Liberal Arts Learning in the Digital Age” yesterday. Mala Radhakrishnan (Chemistry), Orit Shaer (Computer Science), Brian Tjaden (Computer Science), and Michelle Ferreirae ’13 talked about Interdisciplinary Science to a packed crowd in the Science Center 278 y’day evening. We had another 40 who viewed the webcast. The recorded version of the presentation will be made available on Wellesley’s YouTube later today. It was yet another display of the high quality teaching, learning and research taking place at the College. The presentations clearly demonstrated how the most interesting scientific research today requires knowledge that extends far beyond just the core subject. It was clear that the computational science is a core competency that would be required of all researchers and quite obviously, this is one of the areas of relevance to LTS as we move forward – how do we collaborate and engage with the faculty and students in helping with this competency.
The presenters talked about genomic data analysis , computational chemistry of protein-protein interactions and drug development and human computer interaction. In the first case, Brian, a CS faculty, is carrying out research that requires a deeper understanding of biology, biochemistry and chemistry amongst a few other disciplines. Similarly, in the second case, Mala needed to learn cell biology, physics, and applied math. BTW, she is also a poet who has written poems about atoms and molecules. Both Orit and Michelle shared their work in developing intuitive, gesture based software frameworks that helps biologists in their collaborative lab work. In each case, the presenter highlighted the importance of the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of their work and how the liberal arts education paradigm fits nicely with this model.
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I am very happy that the digitization of Browning Love letters has received all the attention that it deserves. Perfect timing and excellent collaboration with Baylor University is making it possible for a large audience to get access to the letters that otherwise required the scholars to visit our Special Collections. I am also thrilled that we have been able to finalize the schedule for the “Liberal Arts Learning in the Digital Age”. I strongly encourage everyone on campus to participate. After all, we are discussing the future of the Library and Technology on campus and we want the community input on these matters.
The “flattened world” resulting from the internet and the web has clear advantages, but has also brought with it the ability to expose the weaknesses in software technologies. The reason is that the advances in the technologies driving the internet are moving at a pace much faster than software development tools. And it is extremely hard to keep up with. In other words, software developers develop expertise by spending a lot of time learning the tools of the trade in a select few “systems” – be it programming languages, or development platforms. The agility required to move from one to the next in a few months or years is a daunting task. And every time you do it, you are basically starting over. When you start over, you are likely to make mistakes – or introduce “bugs”.
The term “bug” is traced back to a failure of an early computing machine called Mark II (in 1947) due to a bug that got trapped in an electronic relay. This was carefully saved in a logbook. The image on the left is from Wikimedia Commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H96566k.jpg) and the actual logbook is preserved in the National Museum of American History. The term “debugging” therefore refers to the act of locating and removing such bugs. However, like everything else in life, the attribution of the term debugging to the story about the bug remains unresolved – apparently it was used by aeronautical engineers in 1945.
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The most hyped event of the year is over and the result was disappointing for the Patriots fans. However, it was a good game with a couple of unfortunate calls by the referee and a lot of dropped passes. Well, we had a great time at our home watching the game with a lot of friends. I just realized that I have not written for a couple of weeks because I have been extremely busy with a few software projects that I am working on. I am on Acela express right now, heading to NY City to participate in a Google Apps user group meeting at Google NY. Hope to not run into the ticker tape parade for the Giants and get delayed going to the meeting.
We have been marching along in terms of software development with a slight twist – web applications for the portal which rely on authoritative data stored in Banner and other systems (such as 25Live) that look and act with a level of consistency that the users expect in software. As I have written many times over, I favor this approach to “Let us wait for Banner to deliver these services” because we will be waiting for a loooong time! Also, because this framework is under our control, the interface can be manipulated in ways that are otherwise not possible. Also, if the users are happy with the navigational approach and display of data we provide, we can leave that alone for however long the users desire. This is obviously not the case with software vendors. They seem to know what is good for us when! We all know that they rarely do a good job and choose the most inopportune moments to make changes.
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