Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So you may have noticed from the group of articles this week that I went to Ireland to learn more about the country’s ICT efforts. The Irish government has a pretty aggressive approach to making sure the country is part of the next-generation networks equation. It’s a country full of smart people. So there I was at a dinner talking with a boatload of PhDs and the guy who invented SMS. So you see the problem, right? It’s actually an issue I run into a lot in this business. You’re having a conversation with someone in the industry, thinking you’re holding up your end of the conversation, and suddenly you realize you’re talking with a genius. And you’re not. You just never know how many patents the person you’re interviewing has in their back pocket.
That was Day 1. Later, a group of journalists were sitting around the table talking to Professor Fionn Murtagh, who is the director of Information, Communications and Emerging Technologies at Science Foundation Ireland. Murtagh is a thoughtful man who seems to actually think about each phrase before having it spew out of his mouth (unlike the entire North American culture or at least my family.) That in and of itself was interesting to observe, but then all of a sudden he says in an answer to a question, “well, while I was working on the Hubble telescope…” in the same tone I use to say, “while I was driving to the grocery store.” Except he was working on the Hubble Space Telescope.
We journalists are easily distracted so we peppered him with questions about that, even though it didn’t have anything to do with ICT. (Except it probably does but we didn’t ask that and wouldn’t have understood the connection if he had answered.) He may have actually said that the technology they used to correct the lens of the Hubble telescope is now being used by one of his colleagues to correct human eyesight because indeed the human eye is nothing more than a set of sophisticated mirrors or lenses or something, just like the telescope. Or he may have said he was driving to the grocery store. I’m still not sure.
I was thinking when I was writing these articles that I should preface each sentence with the phrase, “As I understand it…” because really that is the entire problem with interviewing PhDs. They’re not just smart, they’re supercalifragilisticexpialidocious smart. So while academics may be the first ones who tell you “there is no such thing as a stupid question,” it became pretty apparent to me during this trip that there are indeed a BUNCH of stupid questions you can ask. I’ll share just a couple here:
While watching a demonstration on how using wireless sensors can help people during physical therapy
Journalists: Is that kind of like Wii Fit?
Braniacs: “Um, no. Wii Fit doesn’t record your movements and feed them back instantaneously to a physician to monitor your recovery.”
What Braniacs were probably thinking: Wii Fit????!!! So we tell you we’re working on technology to help the aging demographic live more productive lives via the Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) Centre and you think Wii Fit? We graduated 110 PhDs last year. I’m not doing any more of these.
During 1,400 separate conversations revolving around cognitive radios
Journalists (OK so this was me every time): So what’s a cognitive radio?
Braniacs: La la la, la la la. (Seriously, that is how they answered the question. I know because I asked the question every single time the phrase came up, but I am no closer to explaining it with any confidence so it’s obvious they were speaking gibberish, or singing in their lyrical Irish accents, thus using a smart radio that can detect when a person of lower intelligence is in the room, and thus automatically tuning down their answers to avoid interference with those brain cells, avoiding an explosion of lower-intelligence-person’s brain cells if true explanation reached said person’s ears.)
While looking at a chart that monitors a home’s real-time energy consumption in an attempt to help people and businesses better manage their home energy consumption
Journalists: So which appliances use the most energy? Big-screen TVs?
Braniacs: Um, no. It’s actually the tea kettle and the microwave oven.
What Braniacs were probably thinking: Little minds always revolve around the big-screen TV.
In defense of regular-brained people all over the world who like big-screen TVs, Ireland’s number is soon going to be up. You know what TV shows they have in Ireland? “Ellen,” “Judge Judy” and “Oprah.” I even saw a “Biggest Loser” with Jillian and Bob with British contestants. (How do they do that when they’re at the ranch with U.S. contestants?)
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
— Apress Inc. is selling two books, yes good old fashioned books, to help developers develop applications for the BlackBerry OS. Seems counter-intuitive to me. Shouldn’t there be an app for that?
–For a little perspective on technology, check out this
funny video about cellphone calling and airline Internet.
