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From: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/01/24/265238567/at-30-the-original-mac-is-still-an-archetype-of-innovation?ft=1&f=1001%5B/caption%5D
Happy Birthday Mac! Hard to believe that 30 years have gone by and the genius of the folks, headed by Steve Jobs, that resulted in a computer for the masses, has withstood the brutal technology landscape for so long. Many of the original ideas with respect to the interfaces still remain, giving a sense of familiarity that people crave for, while the underlying software has gone through enormous changes. The Macs, like all other computing devices, has gotten much faster and is able to do a lot more, but life’s simple pleasures such as ⌘Q still remain. I thoroughly miss Hypercard. I loved it and drove my officemate nuts by making Apple read the text in HyperCard, using MacinTalk, I think. Oh, those good old days!
I was listening to an NPR story on this today, I was amazed at the creativity of the group that designed the first Mac. “A self educated dropout, someone in the middle of an MD-Phd program, musicians, an archaeologist, and an artist” who formed the initial team that designed the Mac. Of course, the result shows that this was indeed a brilliant idea. Leave it to the techies and you will get Alt-CTRL-Del!
I have been fortunate to have participated in the evolution of the Macs since its existence. Since I worked in computational chemistry, we had plenty of chances to dabble in new technologies. Initially we used it for writing papers, but soon it became evident that it had enough compute power and a version of Basic programming language that allowed us to visualize small molecules. Soon after several programs emerged such as ChemDraw, that allowed you to draw and rotate small molecules with ease. This was extremely useful.
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I was interviewed by a reporter from Bloomberg regarding Apple’s decision to withdraw from EPEAT ratings and what Wellesley is planning to do about it. Since I don’t control how my responses are going to be used in the story, I felt that it is important to state what I said 🙂
EPEAT ratings provide guidance on how environment friendly the computer systems are. It has been widely known that Apple hardware are not rated very high in EPEAT, whereas some of the PC manufacturers have gotten them pretty high. We purchase PC hardware that are rated gold. In terms of Apple hardware, we do not have the same options that one has with PC hardware.
We make purchasing decisions based on many factors, environmental concerns as well as use cases. In certain academic disciplines they use software to teach that runs only on certain computer platforms. If it is essential to have a Mac based on this reason, the fact that it does not have the stellar environmental rating is less important, because one has no other choice. So, we provide some best practice guidelines on energy conservation and expect the users to follow them.
One of the questions that I was asked was, is Wellesley going to decide to stop purchasing Macs because of this. This was based on the decision by the City of San Francisco to stop purchasing Apple hardware based on this story. My answer was that we will watch how this develops very carefully and decide on further actions such as joining any collective initiative to let Apple know the need to be environmentally conscious in producing their hardware. Apple claims that their hardware is energy efficient, of course.
I also mentioned that I usually watch the discussion on EDUCAUSE CIO Listserve to see how this develops further. It is also the case that we do not have a laptop program and therefore we do not determine what computers the students purchase. We do provide recommended configurations.
So, this is in essence what I conveyed, but who knows how the story will come out!!!
I was at the beautiful state of Vermont twice in a span of a couple of weeks between late May and early June. I wrote already about my trip to Middlebury, VT in my last post. I had to go to Stowe, VT to the Trapp Family Lodge for a NERCOMP Board retreat. It is a sheer coincidence that last year, the NERCOMP retreat preceded the Wellesley senior staff retreat was in Ogunquit in Maine, actually in the same place! The NERCOMP retreat was fun and very productive this year where we engaged in “World Cafe” type of conversations. I feel that this whole idea could have been condensed in the book to 25 pages with the rest of the “stories” made optional. The idea is great and something we are trying to follow at LTS already – have conversations that go beyond the managerial hierarchy so that everyone has a chance to speak up and provide ideas for the organization to grow. The specifics outlined in the book – small round tables covered by white paper and crayons for participants to write on, a flower vase in the center etc. – seem a little silly, but can be important. I encourage you all to watch this seven principles of world cafe. It is a condensed version that captures the essentials.
My wife and I left on our “vacation” to Singapore and Thailand in early June for a couple of weeks. I was really excited about the trip because we have heard a lot about both of these countries and have never been there. So, what exactly is a vacation? (more…)
I went to yet another SunGard (the software vendor for Banner) Executive Summit in Las Vegas from the 24-26th March (yes, a weekend included!) and yes, predictably, I was very disappointed. If you remember, I wrote about my last year experience at this event (again, very disappointed) in a blog post. So, you might ask why did I choose to go there this time around. It all had to do with the fact that we recently renewed our license for Banner and recently SunGard and another competitor Datatel merged. I wanted to find out what exactly this means to us. I am very familiar with Datatel, what its strengths & weaknesses are, so I was genuinely interested in knowing if the new entity’s plans are to pick the strengths of each product to produce a new one.
We did not hear much of anything on the merger nor did we hear much in the way of current product timelines. It was not just me! Some other CIOs, especially from small liberal arts colleges, who generally don’t come to the Summit came along for the same reasons I did and many expressed the same frustrations. Because no agenda is published ahead of time when you need to register, it is very hard to know what is going to happen in this gathering. I registered simply based on hope! I left early on Monday morning before the big announcement – that the combined entity will be called Ellucian. I talked to a few others who went to the Summit from Wellesley to see if they gained any new insight about the merger and product direction and the answer was No.
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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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Here I am in warm, sunny Jupiter, Florida for a week of golf, parties and just relaxation for the holidays. Wait, relaxation? No, that does not come to me naturally. Soon after we arrived here, we grabbed something to eat and hit the golf course for 9 holes. My sons and I had a very good first outing, the last 2 holes were played in not so ideal conditions, but we were able to locate our balls. I have been up since 5:30 AM, my usual wakeup time, attending to College work – we have some purchases to finalize because we got “excellent” deals because of the end of the year. It is yet another game that we all have to play.
I am happy to say that I have brought a different attitude to negotiating purchases at Wellesley and I am thrilled to see some of the staff practicing it effectively. We have saved significant amount through these bargaining which are going towards academic initiatives such as classroom technologies and academic software purchases.
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I am not sure if things have changed the way we celebrate the holiday season or that I am getting older. It just feels so different. I remember the excitement around looking forward to the month of December. I distinctly remember how happy I was walking along 5th avenue in NY City looking at all the displays and going to Barnes and Nobles downtown to pick up books on sale. I was in NY City last Friday and didn’t even occur to me to do these things or the Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree and watch the skaters in the skating rink. I am sure that all of these are still happening and that I am just geting old and my interests are elsewhere.
Our children have grown and the celebrations and buying gifts for them have changed so dramatically, partly due to technologies. I remember how I was running from store to store like a mad man trying to locate that one missing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Character that our elder son so badly wanted. I literally snatched it out of the hands of an old lady in one store after not finding it in seven stores. She was deliberating whether to take that one or another and the moment she put it down, I took it and rushed out. It was a rare commodity then! And boy, it was indeed a happy holiday when the little kid was thrilled to see it under the Christmas tree! Good old days!
A year has gone by since I began at Wellesley around the Holiday season. The creation of the Advisory Council for Library and Technology Policies coincided very closely with my official arrival date and I had a chance to review and comment on the legislation. The first meeting of the ACLTP Committee was held on Wed. 12/15/2010 at 4 PM. Happy Anniversary to ACLTP!
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It is already the end of October and Happy Halloween to you all. Given the wide power outage in CT due to the storm this past weekend, I am not sure how much trick or treating is likely to happen. I remember the days of planning for Halloween with our children, initially my wife yielding to their customized costume choices and then over the years, preference for what is available in the stores that is the latest and greatest to ordering them on the web. We all have gone through the years when there were scares about candies laced with poison and other things to worrying about the amount of sugar in take that a day like today brings. I think this is all fun.
Sept-Oct also happens to be a festival heavy month for us in India. Since Hindu calendar is lunar, our festivals do not fall on fix dates or sometimes not even in the same month. Two major festivals – Navaratri and Deepavali (also known as Diwali in the North) – are celebrated during these months. Deepavali is like the Christmas equivalent for us in terms of the way it is celebrated.
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We finally got power in our house in Higganum, CT on Friday, 9/2. That was 5 1/2 days without electricity. I believe there are still 2% of the Connecticut Light & Power customers who do not have power. We were looking at the CT river as we drove past it and it looks muddy and unclean – who knows what contaminants have gotten into it. I also saw the kind of destruction Irene brought to Vermont – it is unbelievable that a Hurricane which struck North Carolina was so potent that 1400 miles or so further, it still had the punch to cause so much damage. And now Lee is dumping all the rains. I have never ever paid so much attention to weather in my life!
Another academic year has begun. It is not what it used to be 10-15 years ago for the technology support staff. It is true that we experience high call volumes at this time, but, I remember many of us losing sleep over the first few weeks of the Fall semester. Things have changed tremendously as they should.
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The “Summer” is over and as always it went way too fast. Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene caused a lot of havoc in the country, including CT. For a hurricane it moved way slower than the summer, I would say. Until Sunday morning 7 AM, we were able to watch the incessant coverage of Irene on TV as well as multitude of websites. Then the power went out and in our CT home, it is yet to come. The predictions are that our small town may not get it back until Thursday. A couple of hours later, cell signals from AT&T also vanished. Sunday night was an interesting night, no electricity and absolutely no communication and truly, we all felt lost and did not sleep well, hoping for the lights to come back on.
Wellesley, like many other Colleges and Universities, had emergency planning in effect and we helped wherever we can, by posting messages in the appropriate channels encouraging everyone to update their Emergency contact information. Overall, NY, CT and MA were spared by the wrath of Irene with the exception of a few areas such as Western MA. Events like these expose our dependence/addiction to technology. Granted that my dependence is on one extreme, but as I discuss below, the dependence is far more than some are willing to admit.
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