Giving New Technology the Old College Try

Image via CrunchBase

The timeless ritual of moving children into university dorms is a riveting reminder of so many things – not the least of which is just how much stuff is required to live away from home and just how ill-equipped we’ve become to lug it up three flights of stairs.

The excitement and melancholy, the sweat and tears will never change. But the power and compactness of the technology is something else. Cloddy boom boxes and stereo speakers, electric typewriters and record albums took up far more space and rendered a more gritty experience. Today’s college student move into a dorm with a backpack filled with the likes of an iPod, iPhone, netbook, laptop, flash drive, and still have room for books.  They might carry in a television. For sure a mini fridge and microwave.

The distance between our youth and the promise of theirs is formidable, in some measure because of the pervasiveness and efficiency of wireless, digital interactivity.

The text-and-go generation masterfully integrates technology into every aspect of life, making it an electronic umbilical cord to family and friends. They are empowered users and creators, who take their influence in stride.

There also is the enviable freedom of the university campus: a giant think tank for those who don’t just want to apply knowledge, but advance it. Removed from the regiment and myopic expectations of the work place where reigning status quo thwarts innovation.

In this suspended state between childhood and adulthood, students test their wings before flying solo in life. And sometimes, they teach the world a thing or two. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and Richard Branson were among the entrepreneurs who dropped out of college to give their restless dreams flight.  Mark Zuckerberg used his years at Harvard, before dropping out,  to launch and refine Facebook.

And then there is Vitor Lourenco , 21, who designed the 140-character framework for Twitter while a university student. He wanted the tech framework to be simple and efficient, and subtle enough to make the content the star, and the interface to all devices seamless, according to an interview printed in Fast Company. Vitor says he created the website FoodFeed one weekend just to have something to play with.  That entrepreneurial spirit explains why so many university students  don’t just use, but shape new technology.

The New York Times recently discovered what most of us have known for some time, most all of us large and small, old and young begin and end our days texting, blogging, downloading, writing and answering email, and surfing. Our PDAs and smart phones, pixels and gigabytes frame the life that carries on in the middle.

Reliance on and attachment to Internet-connected technology is mainstream. The latest gadgets no longer are the exclusive domain of the young. Nearly half of all Americans  make their wireless connections and social networking by way of laptops and handheld mobile devices.  It’s why Facebook and Twitter have become favorite pastime of Baby Boomer parents moving their children to college.

All of which lays the groundwork for the next big thing – ubiquitous computing — f incorporating digital intelligence into everyday objects, from coffee mugs and toothbrushes to refrigerators and doorways. Embedded sensors will extend information processing and networking capabilities to objects never before thought of as “technology.”  Our lives will resemble the Tom Cruise movie, The Minority Report.

Author Adam Greenfield dubs the phenomenon “everyware,” in his book by the same name. It is the notion of living with and being one with connected technology that facilitates an ambient relationship with information. Greenfield references places within the academic community where ubiquitous technology is in play.

It’s just a matter of time before some undergraduate genius brings us the next interface or system that helps deliver ubiquitous computing to the masses.

It sure will make that college move-in day a lot easier.