Posts Tagged With: Today’s World

Levelers

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I read a great blog post in college, and sadly I can't find it now, so I'll summarize. It showed a picture of Hearst Castle, and a photo of an average middle-class home, and the text of the post went something like:

  • One of these can travel across the country in 6 hours.

  • One of these can communicate with friends and family on the other side of the country instantaneously.

  • One of these can receive news from the other side of the globe instantaneously.

  • One of these can watch movies in full color and sound in their own home.

  • One of these can expect to live to age 80, and give birth to a child without serious risk of complications.

  • One of these can wash an entire day's worth of dishes in 40 minutes with no human effort.

Hearst Castle. Photo credit Beedie Savage. Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0

The point is, even though Hearst was one of the richest men on the planet, in many ways the average middle class person today enjoys a better quality of life, due to advancements in technology and medical science since the 1940's.

It's really exciting when technologies (air travel, the Internet, smartphones, appliances) become accessible and cheap enough that everyone can enjoy them. But it's even more exciting when the high end of the market comes within reach of most people.

Let's say Bill Gates wants a better smartphone - say, with a longer battery, or with a UI that does exactly what he wants. He's basically out of luck - he can't throw enough money at the problem to get a better phone than what's currently on the market. A phone you can afford is the best one that Bill Gates can buy. I call products like these levelers, because they level the playing field for everyone. It's easy to think of other examples - most software/apps/websites, beers, movies, and more.

So I got excited yesterday when I read about a product that might level the playing field for another experience that's currently only for rich people.

To get a sense of what JauntVR has built, their technology is described as “an end-to-end solution for creating cinematic VR experiences.” Their camera films real world footage from everything surrounding it, and their software stitches those clips together to create a seamless experience. The wrap-around film capture means that you’re able to swivel in any direction to maintain that feeling of “actually being there.”

Rarely is the window into the future as stunningly clear as was for me for the next few minutes inside that Oculus Rift. So what was it like inside? (Keep in mind: writing about the mindshock of live action VR, is quite like trying to share a photograph of your favorite song. Words simply cannot do justice.)

I settled into a swivel chair at the center of a dark surround-sound equipped room, slid on the Rift, and instantly I was no longer in Palo Alto but sitting inches away from a string quartet performing inside a luxurious concert hall. Stunned by the realism (it is real after all!) I began turning in every direction, to discover that behind me I could see the full venue where an audience would sit. Then I understood where I was – right where the conductor would stand. Not a bad seat and with the surround sound so clear, I felt as if I was actually there.

Just like that - millions of people can suddenly all sit courtside for the NBA Finals, or even hover above the court, and suddenly, my view of the game isn't from section 400, it's as good as Jack Nicholson's.

This got me really excited for the future of virtual reality, and the new things that people are going to build on top of it. I can't wait to see what people build.

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It begins

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Email from my alma mater:

Dear Members of the Claremont McKenna College Community,

I am writing to update you on an important action taken by the Board of Trustees at its meeting on March 9, 2013. In particular, the Board acted to end the College’s “No Packaged Loan” financial aid policy. Beginning with the fall 2014 entering freshman class, the College will reinstate its former practice of including reasonable loan amounts of up to $4,000 per year in the financial aid package for need-based students. This policy change will not affect any current students during their remaining time at CMC, nor will it affect new students enrolling in fall 2013.

This decision was not taken lightly, as we know that there are challenges and pressures that some families face regarding the affordability of a college education. However, our current situation is best understood in view of the College’s long-standing commitment to need-blind admission and to meeting the financially demonstrated need of all admitted, domestic freshman students. The College’s Strategic Plan identifies need-blind admission as one of our most important values, and highlights the importance of insuring our need-blind policy is financially sustainable over the long term. Therefore, I wanted to take this opportunity to briefly discuss the background of the No Packaged Loan policy, and the reasons why the Board determined it was necessary to end the policy at this time.

The College adopted the No Packaged Loan policy in the spring of 2008, just prior to the global financial crisis, at a time when a number of CMC’s peer colleges and universities were implementing various forms of no-loan or reduced-loan policies. At that time, the College completed an extensive financial analysis of the cost of a no packaged loan policy. The financial projections indicated that the College could replace loans with grants within its existing financial aid resources through a combination of actions, including reductions in the amount of merit aid and, most significantly, a reallocation of unrestricted endowment funds that were then being used to support a 0% interest institutional loan fund.

The financial collapse that caused the recent economic recession soon followed. As with most colleges and universities, the economic conditions of the past several years have placed significant pressure on the College’s operating budget. The College has worked to navigate through this period, which has included increasing our commitment to institutional financial aid at almost twice the rate of tuition increases. But we have had concerns about the sustainability of the No Packaged Loan policy, as we have focused on doing everything we can to ensure CMC remains accessible and affordable to all qualified students, regardless of need.

It is within this context that the Board has been engaged this year in a number of important discussions related to the costs and funding of a CMC education, and about the No Packaged Loan policy in particular. This discussion has also included valuable insight and analysis from the faculty, particularly from the faculty’s Admission and Financial Aid Committee (AFAC), who examined the effects of the No Packaged Loan policy on lower-income and minority applicants since the program’s inception five years ago. The Board weighed the AFAC’s findings in their decision and is appreciative of this research.

Through these discussions and careful analysis, the Board decided that, although the No Packaged Loan policy was important to preserve, if feasible, the College’s overarching priority should be to preserve and protect the College’s need-blind admission policies.

In making the decision to eliminate the No Packaged Loan policy, the Board reaffirmed several important commitments:

That the College is committed to providing access to all qualified students based on academic talent and not on financial need;

That the College is committed to securing and strengthening its need-blind admission and to meeting full-need policies by making fundraising for financial aid a priority;

That the College is committed to ensuring that packaged loan levels are reasonable and affordable;

That the College’s financial aid budget will not be reduced by this decision, and ongoing evaluation of the financial aid budget should take place during the next five years.

To help meet these goals, the Board authorized the administration to develop a plan for a targeted fundraising initiative that will focus on securing additional support for financial aid.

It seems probable that many colleges and universities across the country will soon be conducting similar evaluations of their financial aid policies and making changes. It is important for each institution to develop a strategy that assists students and their families to afford higher education with a program that is financially sustainable for the institution. I believe that is what we have done here.

Sincerely,

Pamela Gann
President

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Huh?

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According to a new Zogby poll, 45% of Americans fear high levels of corruption if Hillary Clinton returns to office. What? I'm sorry, maybe I didn't hear correctly? As opposed to the low levels of corruption we are enjoying now? The tripling of paid lobbyists on K Street? The ethics 'reform' that means politicians are still enjoying lunches and paid vacations from those lobbyists? A representative soliciting a teen page for sex? No-bid contracts offered to the vice president's old company? Leaking the name of a CIA operative to exact revenge on her truth-telling husband? Congressional votes in exchange for pork/lobby money? Who is being kidded? Bill Clinton's presidency was a little before my time. But getting blown by a White House intern does not hurt the country, or its finances, or take money from its tax payers. I cannot believe the Clintons had scandals to match these. I mean maybe there will be corruption under Hillary Clinton but can it possibly top the amount now? Will there be less corruption under McCain or Obama or Edwards?

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Please, Put More Personal Information On The Internets

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Google Maps today released a feature called "My Maps," where you can personalize Google Maps and add your favorite places to the map. This is pretty cool, except when you realize how easy we are making things for stalkers. That said, I can't wait for my favorite young, nubile, innocent female friends to place the location of their house on the Internet for everyone to see.

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We Are Less Violent Than Ever

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From Steven Pinker:
Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. But, today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West, far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur, and widely condemned when they are brought to light.

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Home Ownership & Unemployment

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Slate and MR have been talking recently about the fact that unemployment is tied to permanent home ownership: the more mobile your population the lower unemployment will be. This is another reason why the simple economic models I am looking at in my intro classes will never work. Economists for the sake of simplicity will ignore simple things, like that people get attached to their belongings and surroundings. With that said we should not dismiss economics. It is simply unlikely that we will ever get to the equilibriums the models imply.

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