it turns out that in many parts of the
world it is becoming cheaper to collect
data digitally than on paper, so the developing world can begin to move in
this direction as well, using the data
mining of digital data to gain information on trends.
Civil liberties: 3. Events in Iran and
Colombia have demonstrated the use
of technology to mobilize people. The
Alliance of Youth Movements Summit,
held last year in New York City and soon
to be held again, taught people how to
create youth groups, and heavily utilized Webcasts and Facebook. Megan
discussed the role that technology can
play for people in “extreme” situations
such as how SMS alerts can be used in
parts of Africa to warn women about
safe travel routes. She argued that technology can help speed up the improvement of life, particularly for women, in
some parts of the world where there is
still great danger. She also discussed
the potential for improving education,
such as creating opportunities for collaboration between schools across geographic and economic divides.
The environment: 4. There are many
CS opportunities in building the control systems involved for new energy-delivery approaches. For example, So-larBox is an application that will help
groups of people organize to increase
their buying power of solar panels in
their neighborhood. Google’s Power-Meter application will help people see
power usage in their home. Studies
show that once people know how much
energy they are using, they usually decrease usage by 5%–15%.
Megan closed by saying that the 21st
century will be all about these kinds of
interconnectedness, and that there are
many, many opportunities for people
in CS to work on exciting, interesting,
and relevant projects.
from “Grace hopper
Keynote 2: fran Berman”
http://cacm.acm.org/
blogs/blog-cacm/44532
The second keynote speaker was Fran
Berman, vice president for research at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Fran
was formerly director of San Diego Supercomputer Center and has worked
for years in the design and development of a national-scale cyberinfra-structure.
Fran’s talk was entitled “Creating
Technology for the Social Good: A Prologue.” Her basic message was that
science, engineering, and technology
really matter when it comes to addressing and solving the most pressing problems facing society today.
As an example of a problem, and a
solution born out of technology, she
briefly discussed the area of safer environments through earthquake prediction. Basically, computer models
are being developed to predict seismic
activity. These models are then run
on supercomputers, which generate
output in the form of seismic predictions, showing where seismic activity
will occur and how long it will last after an initial quake. This information
is being used to develop new building
codes, better disaster-response plans,
and targeted retrofitting of older construction. Other examples Fran cited
are the OLPC project to bring computers to children in the developing world
and iRobot, which is developing robots
suited for dangerous situations so that
humans don’t have to be exposed to
danger and risk.
But Fran argues there is a major
area that we have to address as the
“prologue” to effectively addressing
the large problems. That issue is data.
We have to harness data, so that we can
turn it into information and knowledge. This will help us create a strong
foundation for efforts driven by science
and engineering.
Electronic data is fragile. Much of it,
such as wikis and Web sites, disappears
quickly or is changed often. And there’s
a lot of it! There is currently more than
a zettabyte of data. The U.S. Library
of Congress alone has more than 295
terabytes of data. We are running out
of room in which to store it all, so we
have to be cognizant of the data life cycle and look at ways in which computer
scientists can support the data life cycle. But we also have to recognize that
the CS view of data is different than a
librarian’s view of data which, in turn,
is different than an individual user’s
view of data.
So the key questions we need to
think about are: What should we save?
How should we save it? Who should
pay for it?
Addressing these questions now is
part of the process of creating a strong
foundation for the technology work we
will be doing in the years to come. Fran
pointed out that we have to prepare
today’s students with technical skills,
but that they also have to be prepared
to understand international cultures,
business, politics, and policy. Only then
will they be ready to take on leadership
roles in the years to come. Fran closed
by saying that to create positive change
we have to ask the hard questions, par-
ticularly about the representation of
women and minorities in CS; create
goals and metrics of success, and then
hold people to them; publicly recog-
nize the successes of our colleagues
and students; and, when possible, use
our role to create policy, set priorities,
and handle resource allocation.
from “final thoughts About
Grace hopper conference”
http://cacm.acm.org/
blogs/blog-cacm/44533
My wrap-up from Grace Hopper—
some Web sites and information about
women and technology worldwide,
much of it gleaned during the session
“The ‘F’ Word: Feminism and Technology.” The repeated message was that
we have to see technology as a means to
an end, not an end itself. If we want to
build technology to help women, particularly in the developing world, we
have to have the relevant context and
involve women themselves in the development process. For example, in rural Pakistan the majority of women are
illiterate, so a text-based Internet tool
is useless. But an audiovisual medium,
like one that is currently being used to
provide information about health-care
services, will be much more successful.
While in the developed world we seem
to always think of a computer solution, usually Web-based, to problems,
these days the technology that will help
women is most likely to involve mobile
phones. This has been demonstrated
in Africa by the Advancement through
Interactive Radio project in which mobile phone technology allows women
to participate in call-in programs on
TV and radio, giving them a voice in
community affairs which they had not
previously had.
Valerie Barr is the chair of the computer science
department at Union college.