Vassar Technology Today | A wacky holiday wishlist for the high-tech student

Matthew Leung Managing Editor

With Personal Desktop Assistants, iPods, smart phones, and other gadgets becoming increasingly popular and accessible, technology seems to be losing its old appeal as something strange and other-wordly. For those who feel like the thrill and challenge of finding that perfect high-tech holiday gift has been lost, don’t fret. One need simply look to some of the wildest developments and fads in technology for gift ideas sure to surprise and delight even the most technologically savvy.

Make the campus shuttle high-tech
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) iCampus (iCampus.mit.edu) is like Blackboard gone wild. MIT’s $25 million joint-research project with Microsoft that started in 1999, iCampus aims to use technology to improve higher education. Improving “higher education” apparently includes a $30,000 project to install Global Positioning System (GPS) devices on campus shuttle buses so that students waiting at a bus stop can use a wireless laptop or handheld device to see the exact location of each bus. I empathize with those who have to stand and wait for the Vassar campus shuttle.

Subscribe to digital grading
Perhaps a more traditional development at MIT is iMoat (web.mit.edu/imoat), a Web-based tool that allows students to submit essays online and instructors to grade them online as well. One possibility for iMoat is to replace written placement exams like the SAT II Writing test or the AP English exam. According to MIT, essay topics can be electronically sent to students, who will be able to plan out their given topics at home and type and revise their essays before submitting them electronically to graders, who would be able to grade the essays from anywhere. That way, College Board does not need to gather professional graders for an incentivized vacation in Disneyland, in order to get essays graded.

Protect Web users with a radiation suit
In late November 2006, two schools in England banned the use of a wireless networks due to radiation concerns. At the Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, a classics professor told Britain’s Times Online that while in the vicinity of the wireless network, he suffered “sudden skin pains and burning sensations, along with bouts of nausea.” The U.K. government believes that radiation from wireless networks should not be a concern, but acknowledged that research data on it is inconclusive.
Demron (radshield.com/consumer.cfm), a radiation shield corporation, sells a full body radiation suit that one can easily put on “like a jumpsuit.” According to the Web site, also included is “groin protection to provide shielding to the reproductive organs.”

Integrate VCards with cell phones
Over the past few years in Japan and some towns in Germany, people have been able to buy soda and train tickets by holding their cell phones, with a specially embedded computer chip, up to the sensor of a vending machine. The United States, it seems, is technologically behind. Only recently did a start-up company called Feed Tribes (feedtribes.com) offer this technology in Bolder, Col., where customers can use their cell phones like a VCard to pay for food at chains of the restaurant Noodles & Co. The College has decided to try using students cell phone numbers to update the on-campus network, so why stop there?

A piece of prime (un)real estate
Second Life (secondlife.com) is a three-dimensional online virtual world published by Linden Lab that has recently been the center of political and financial attention. This high-stakes virtual world allows users to sign up, create an identity, and buy virtual properties—literally intangible real estates stored on the computers of the company—for real currency. For example, 16 cyber-acres costs U.S. $1,250 and a monthly maintenance fee of U.S. $195. Virtual outfits, vehicles, buildings, and other luxuries also cost money. Customers include not only private individuals but also corporate customers such as Sony, IBM, and General Motors. Dell sells virtual computers on Dell Island, and Toyota and Nissan are setting up virtual shops to sell cars on the island. The island has over 1.7 million residents today.
Virtual residents of the island can even have sex with each other, including a virtual adult and a virtual child, which has raised some legal questions. But according to Jack Balkin, a professor of constitutional law at Yale Law School, federal laws should not apply to the virtual island because the residents are only computer animations. As a holiday gift, $1,250 seems cheap to satisfy one’s desire to reject the harsh reality and take flight to an imaginary world. On the other hand, perhaps a consultation with a psychologist would be a more practical use of that money. But, who would want such an ordinary and traditional option?