Collegiate Times

When I visit the Virginia Tech homepage, I notice our new motto, “Invent the Future” and I wonder what exactly we are doing to further that goal. In the past year or so, I have become intensely interested in technology and what the future will be like five to 10 years from now and I have had visions and hopes for where we could be.

First let me start by saying that if we hope to be the technology leaders amongst universities in the United States, we are already behind. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has the OpenCourseWare initiative in which they list all their classes, the course syllabi, and notes. University of California, Berkeley has entire webcasts (taped video lectures) of entry level courses posted online. The university occasionally hosts webcasts of notable events on campus, where poets, administrators, writers etc. have a message that they would like the community to hear.

This type of information is useful to different audiences. High school students can view them to get a feel for how classes will be and it may help them decide their majors. Undergraduates can use them if they miss a lecture, or need to hrefresh themselves on material a few weeks old.

Parallel to these developments, the last few years have seen tremendous breakthroughs in technology. Seagate has announced a terabyte hard drive recently, as well as ones with speeds up to 15,000 rpm (twice what they are now). I am mentioning this to show how cheap storage capacity will be in the future if we need server space. It doesn’t look like we will, because the webcasts on the above mentioned sites are in Real Media format and are very small in size.

In addition to the above uses mentioned for webcasts, I also have another personal reason why I want to see them implemented. Our memories are fragile and temporary. When I think of what third grade was like, I only remember a few images of that time and place.

I am naturally the type of person who likes to keep a record of his memories and experiences. I think if we really invested in webcast technology, alongside creating other types of videos on campus, we could really preserve a collective memory of what the experience is like here.

Websites like YouTube are a shining example that this is where we are headed. People are naturally creative and want to express themselves. I’m sure if we had a website in place for Virginia Tech students to share their memories, we would immediately have a lot of fun experiences to view and learn from. User ratings will separate the wheat from the chaff.

Thinking back on my college experience, I realize that I haven’t taken many pictures.  There are a lot of memories I have, but will I remember it at all five to 10 years from now? Will my Virginia Tech experience be a set of images in my head like the ones I have of third grade? This is worrisome for me, and it’s very unfortunate I didn’t have these insights earlier. This is an open letter to Virginia Tech students to remind ourselves that if we want to be the technology leaders in the future, we must act now. Thank you for your time.

 
Fahid Hasan
Senior, Biology