irrational exuberance
There’s no way I can follow the Chinese here, but this video seems to be about Air China pilots unable to communicate with English speaking air traffic controllers. I’ve never flown them internationally, but I have found there to be a lot of English speaking flight attendants on Air China, China Eastern, and Hainan Airlines within China. It’s a little bit disturbing to think that passengers might be better accommodated than ground control on international flights.
I just came across a very interesting World Heritage Site web presence by way of a link from Jundo Cohen.
I’ve previously posted about telepresence and technologies that allow us to “be there” for face to face interactions over the internet. The World Heritage Tour is a collection of Quicktime 3d panoramas that allow web users to be “telepresent” and look around at many world heritage sites themselves. As more and more photos and videos are geo-tagged, I hope we will see virtual “web tourism” leveraging technologies like Microsoft Photosynth in the future.
I came across some old Cisco TV spots from 1999 that have a similar feel to the current “Human Network” advertisements. Even in the heady days of the late nineties, the claim that the internet would make “long distance calls a thing of the past” was ambitious. It is not yet a decade later, and while long distance may still linger on, many of us are accustomed to flat rate calling plans. VOIP is taking over the enterprise and consumer options abound. Now we think nothing of worldwide video conferencing - lifesize high definition conferencing is starting to take hold. Are you ready?
Weather waylaid me on my way back to the east coast from Cisco Live Networkers. While I could write volumes on my feelings about the transportation industry, I wanted to share something else about my experience:
As soon as my flight out of O’Hare was canceled I used my mobile to call our travel specialist. They quickly found the next available flight (today) and a local hotel for my stay overnight. I was able to quickly check-in with the airline for my new boarding pass and quickly check-in at the hotel since I already had a reservation. The only real trouble was standing in line at the gift shop to buy toothpaste (my luggage is apparently at an undisclosed location somewhere in the ether).
From my hotel room last night I used EVDO to login, do some work, and then hang out virtually with my east coast friends in Second Life and via meebo. I mentioned my waylaid status on twitter and Facebook and got a good night’s sleep.
I woke up this morning to a Facebook message from a coworker lamenting that he hadn’t seen my status last night, as he would have set me up with a friend of his in Chicago to go out and hit the town. While the connection was missed this time, it all speaks to the power of the network. Sometimes life gives you lemons, but it is getting easier and easier to make lemonade.
I’ve been in Anaheim, California this week attending Cisco Live Networkers 2007. In addition to all the live sessions at Networkers, there was a parallel online track this year in the virtual world of Second Life.
Most of my week was spent in sessions here in Anaheim, but I did get a chance to pop into Second Life for Chuck Fishman’s talk on media convergence. Dannette CiscoSystems was logged into to broadcast his talk into a breakout in the lounge here at Networkers, but I wanted to participate so I logged in from Laptop Lane.
Experiences like this really drive home the place-shifting enabled by networked virtual worlds like Second Life. The event was held in Second Life, but mediated from the Networkers lounge in Anaheim. I was physically in Anaheim near the lounge, but logged into the event on my laptop in Second Life. I realized while talking to a colleague that it was completely unclear what the word “here” meant.
Second Life seems to be in Gartner’s “trough of disillusionment” at present, and a lot of people are skeptical of the value for collaboration. It’s amazing though, that a single event like today’s can really bring in some converts. When the talk was over, other real-life attendees at Networkers pulled out their laptops and asked how to create accounts.
Second Life may be seeing difficult times in the press, but the paradigm is gaining mindshare.
There’s a new cut of the famous Shift Happens video going around on Youtube. The graphics on this one really help to drive home the points.
I’m not a big gamer, but I do like to keep up with the latest in gaming technology when I can. Ever since the Wii was launched, I’ve been in the habit of inquiring into their availability whenever I’ve happened to be at my local electronics big box. So it happened that today, rather quietly, they acknowledged a few in inventory and quietly hooked me up with one. Apparently they fear some kind of rampage if they aren’t sneaky about it - I’m not sure why.
Being the occasionally spontaneous person that I am, I came home with a new Wii, extra Wiimote, Wii Sports, Wii Play, and whatever the current Zelda game is called (for good measure). Connecting and configuring could not have been much easier… I plugged it in, answered a few questions with the remote and was off and running. Quickly I realized that my Wii wanted to use my wireless. AES encryption? No problem for the Wii. It even managed to configure the wireless encryption in a friendly way - the first device I’ve ever seen to do that.
After being amazed at the built in weather and news applications I decided to download the Wii Opera Web Browser. This is the killer app. Not only can I load Youtube on my TV, it’s easy to do it. I can fullscreen videos just like on my PC. Facebook? No problem, I can log in and post to my profile. Del.icio.us? Check. Digg? Check. Consolenomad.com? Of course.
I think you get the picture. Opera on the Wii is a real web browser and it’s surprisingly easy to use. As someone that no longer watches cable TV, I consume a lot of online video - from humor to educational lectures. I now have an easy way to do a lot of this viewing directly from my TV with a remote control. If you’re a geek for web video, I highly recommend it.
As for the games, well, I’m just now getting to that part =)
In preparation for this weekend’s coming events Cyrus Huffhines of Blueair.tv will be interviewing Alexander Rose of the Long Now Foundation in Second Life. The interview will be held at the amphitheatre in Kula 1 tomorrow, June 27th, 2007, at 2:30PM SLT (PST). The Long Now Foundation will be holding virtual events in Second Life this weekend for both members and the public in conjunction with the opening of Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings. I may be helping out in SL this weekend, so if you see me, please say hello!
There’s a video floating around right now detailing how recruitment firms help U.S. based companies get visas for foreign job applicants. I’m not opposed to immigration to the U.S. in the least, but when a business flourishes around delicately navigating the rules like this, it’s clear that the system is broken.
The following quote pretty much says it all:
“Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified U.S. worker … we are complying with the law fully, but our objective is to get this person a green card.”
It seems to me that the system is broken, because the dialogue is broken. The U.S. is largely divided between pro- and anti- immigration/outsourcing camps right now. I think we need an honest and open debate about the state of the U.S. labor market and the needs of U.S. based employers. If we want market forces to drive things, then we need a transparent hiring system unencumbered by these sorts of requisite deceptions. The system as it stands today hurts both U.S. natives and sometimes the visa holders hired in their stead.
If the U.S. wants to be competitive in the long term, there needs to be focus on developing the right kind of talent pool here in the U.S. We’ll have to address our educational system and the reasons that math, science, and engineering don’t appeal to disenchanted college students. We’ll have to address immigration policy - I don’t think we need visa constrained “guest workers”, we need new American citizens from overseas with all the privileges and responsibilities entailed in that title. We need to take an honest look at where we are, where we’re headed, and whether we have the will to do anything about it.
