Innovation Blog

It sounds nutty and maybe it is but the researchers at the Minho University in Portugal have designed and flown a plane that has no mechanical connections or wires between its engine, computers, navigation, etc. It is wireless.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn9176-flybywireless-plane-takes-to-the-air.html

So here I sit on one of the first hot days of summer in Chicago. Waiting for the AC repair man and what should show up? Nature has an article on a concept for a nano refridge. Seems that if you could build a nano fan (can't everyone) and you turned on the fan the molecules on one side would get hotter and the ones on the other side would get cooler. Now my only question is how many nano fans would it take to cool your average adult male? Well you can check out the research at arXiv.org.

Well technology is neither good nor bad. It is only how it is used that can be judged. For years we have been told about the benefits of technology to education. Yet here is an article about whether to limit network access in a university classroom. The concern is what the students are doing with the internet access. Being an adult graduate student for the last 6 years I am pretty sure that most graduate students are there because they want to be and they want to learn. So where is the disconnect? Either the problem is much less wide spread than people think or for some reason the students are not engaged in the class.

The same kind of problem exists in business with blackberries. How many times have you been to a meeting where there are a number of attendees who spend the whole meeting dealing with there email? Is there email more important than the meeting? Maybe the meeting coordinator needs to think through who was invited to the meeting and if their role is important in the meeting. The bottom line is if technology is distracting people, maybe it is the technology and maybe it is what they are distracted from.