A cellphone may be just a cellphone

In The Economist magazine's Technology Quarterly nearly a month ago, the magazine gave instincts a healthy dose of reality. Without taking sides, the magazine simply observes that there exists the chance that the cell phone of the future won't necessarily be your planner, GPS tracker, credit card, car keys and internet browser all in one. It may just still be a cell phone.

Have you ever heard someone talk about the future of technology with devout certainty? Most likely you have heard it in the form of a computer doing some marvelous task, or a cell phone coming equip with a host of features not yet standard with today's Nokias and Samsungs. However, here's the important part that these people forget: the most important factor in a technology's success is not in the development of the technology, but rather how that technology is adopted by the masses.

It is a fair guess to assume that technology will accomplish tasks in 20 years that we can't do well now. There's also the likely probability that our lives will be simplified (or complicated, perhaps?) by the continual merging of new technologies and consumer goods. Yet the "guarantee" that one technology will become a standard in the future is certainly an extravagant claim. Who knows how humans will react and use new technology?

An interesting case is presented with both video conferencing and text messaging. Video conferencing technology, a sure "guarantee" to take-off over 20 years ago, fell flat. Text messaging, an tool offered by the communications industry with lowly expectations both in the industry and outside, became a worldwide force. The Economist speculates that cell phones may become small devices with extra add-on components, like an add-on piece to enable GPS, or an add-on screen to manage credit-card purchases or extra, unforeseen things. Or maybe people will simply settle for different cell phones to do different tasks, with the magazine making the analogy with people having different cars for different purposes.

This New York Times article discusses its picks for the top 10 technology goods on the market for 2006. Interestingly, one of those picks is the "Jitterbug" cell phone, a simplified cell phone for people who don't want the internet, a calendar, contact list, etc. Its only buttons are numbers plus a "yes" and "no" button. It even makes a fake dial-tone when you open phone to make a call. The super-simplified Jitterbug doesn't even have buttons to dial numbers - you can only make calls to 911, one pre-programmed number or the operator, who will connect your call for free to a list of numbers you give the Jitterbug operator beforehand. Indeed, this phone does a bit of oversimplifying, and it seems their market may be a niche of older, less technology-savvy customers. But it's an interesting product that brings up an interesting point: Technology doesn't necessarily need to move in predictable ways to make progress.

One thing I know is for certain: I prefer my songs on my iPod, my calls on my cell phone, and internet on my (future) Blackberry. Time will tell if others do too.

Education

The "A-Team" is the status my friend, a high school math teacher in Washington DC, gives to students who achieve an 80% or higher on their tests in his class. Members of the "A-Team" have their tests posted in the room for all to marvel at. Yet visiting his classroom a few weeks ago, I noticed that there were fewer than eight tests posted under the "A-Team" sign despite him having over 90 students spread between three classes. This does not seem like a good average.

My friend teaches high school math at one of the poorest-achieving high schools in the country. Some of the stats from his school are outlandish: 7% of the high school are "proficient" in math (based on national, rather low, standards) and less than 15% are proficient in reading. As of a month ago, 60% of the 90+ students in my friend's geometry and alegebra 2 class were failing the course (although recently, that number has dropped to 45%). Only 30% of the senior class graduates. According to the school, 99.9% of the students are black. There are only 800 students in the school, so I'm not even sure where the other .1% comes from.

My friend hasn't met some of his students (he has been teaching since September), some students miss school because they're in jail, other students because they're pregnant. There are other oddities that certainly don't help the students learn: unnecessary announcements over the school-wide PA system that interrupt class, no repercussions when students walk into class 15 minutes late (those who arrive on-time to class are in a very small minority), fellow teachers who themselves show up 15 minutes late to class, gang-related fights in the halls, a shooting in the campus parking lot, a principal who seems oblivious to the cyclical plight of his students and parents, etc. etc. My friend has a mental storybook full of eyebrow-raising incidents, which he must repeat over and over again to the scores of incredulous suburbanites back home in California, where we are both from.

These stats and incidents do not address the problems, they merely touch on the symptoms. My friend has aptly noted that many of his students' parents, and their parents, have always lived in the same tired part of Washington that is awash in ramshackle houses, carry-out food restaurants, check cashing booths and metal-bar-covered windows. Recently, three students at the high school were gunned down at the "Good Hope Carry-Out," serving as a reminder to my friend's students just how much hope society really gave them. These students are far beyond being failed by society; they completely lack opportunity. Growing up in a neighborhood that was left behind long ago, these students are isolated by a cycle that failed their parents and will fail them too.

Oddly, both the school's website and a not-for-profit website called "ExploreDC" fail to see a problem. The school's website has the wrong principle pictured. The ExploreDC site, when writing about my friend's school, says that new changes are benefiting the school where my friend teaches. "This change in our approach to education has been very successful in helping to raise student performance on standardized tests, in addition to providing students vital information required for making wise career choice." Even odder, at the bottom of the page the site writes "Attendance: 90% or better". I think it fair to say my friend would disagree. A simple walk through the metal detectors, past the corridor displaying the students' national testing statistics and into any class would probably make the author of the ExploreDC website wince on both his points.

It is but a 5 minute drive to traverse DC's roads from my friend's high school to the Capitol Building, that fine building where politicians heatedly debate what's in our national interest while making deals to secure Americans' better future. Yet for my friend's students, the Capitol Building may as well be another world away. These students isolated without opportunity, it is up to people like my friend to make the difference.

Frank Stanton

Frank Stanton, a pioneer of network television, a champion of the press' rights to oversee government, and a businessman who sometimes got in the way of the newsmen under him, passed away on Christmas Eve at 98 years old. Like the old guard of diverse, albeit opinionated and sometimes wrong newsmen, Stanton refused to depart life in the 80s and 90s despite the evolution of television into a more specialized and personalized form of entertainment. Now in 2006, the 6 o'clock news is dead.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the internet provides more accurate information (via the ability to check multiple sources instantly) and because not all stories interest all people. With the internet, podcasts, specialized TV/radio channels and a plethora of other information vehicles, we can pay attention to the stories that interests us, and not waste time watching overconfident newsmen tell us their spin (or more accurately, their network's spin) on that same story. But the quest for personally gratifying information can also be problematic.

The one time I met Mr. Stanton, a lunch in Boston with him and my mom, he asked me what newspapers I read. I thought it a funny question; at that time, my newspaper was the sports section and the rest was recycling. I stuttered out a smattering of newspapers and magazines I figured were important (but didn't read), recognizing that I didn't read enough to meet his standards but not realizing why it mattered. Now I think I know why this question is important.

The question had nothing to do with newspapers; the question had to do with interests and information. By only reading the San Francisco Chronicle sports section, I was educating myself plenty about the Oakland A's, San Francisco 49ers and college sports, but I was narrowing my focus so that everything else was a blur. I knew nothing about business news (I found the topic boring), cared little about international affairs (except for what my teachers at school told me), had a scant knowledge of art (despite playing classical piano for over 14 years), etc. etc. Why? Because I wasn't interested. I was more interested in whether Jason Giambi would win the MVP for my beloved Oakland A's, and so I read about it.

There is something to be gained from having knowledge of other fields besides our "interests." First, we can't really know what else interests us if we never try. I cared little about Latin American politics, and never read about them - until one day this summer in China, exhausted from studying and no-one I could speak English with, I opened my crumpled Economist magazine and grudgingly read my final two unread articles about Latin America because it was better than another four hours of writing Chinese characters. Now, I look forward to the "Americas" section.

However, more importantly there is good to be gained when a lot of people know a little about a lot of things. In passing, conversations can be more fun and it's easier to learn faster. Most importantly, however, it helps people understand other people better. It's easy to simplify without knowledge; it's hard to have knowledge and be simpleminded. The marvel of ignorance is helped along by the boring cliche about bliss (yet contradicted by knowledge and power); however, it's my opinion that stupidity is not a prudent life-choice nor an achievement to be admired.

Unfortunately, there is little knowledge to be gleaned nowadays from watching network or cable news. It is narrow-minded, safe and boring - an ironic kudos to Fox News notwithstanding, not for good coverage, but for giving the downward spiral of news a sideways kick in the knees - with predictable stories and solemn, robotic anchors (juxtaposed with eccentric, loud and crooked statistics-wielding "news" pundits). Network and cable news resembles an old, unrefreshed page of AP or Reuters news that has been stuck on your web browser for half a day: World coverage of gruesome death tolls, outbreaks, disasters; national news of politicos and their scripted statements to the press; local news of the recent shootings, robberies, and girl scouts. No analysis, superficial facts. Pundits resemble the opposite; screaming caricatures with obvious agendas, who will predictably rant about whatever news was on earlier seen through the lens of their political leaning.

There is an audience waiting for the return of real news. The explosion of NPR is an ironic return to broad-based news coverage with ample analysis and opinionated, yet scholarly, discussion. It's ironic because NPR itself is a niche existing with thousands of others; it's a return because as it grows it will leave behind the title "niche."

What we choose read/watch/listen to/whatever beyond our envelope doesn't really matter; as long as we remind ourselves that we put ourselves at a disadvantage by only caring about what we're "interested" in, and tuning the rest out. Because "interests" are often used as a rationalization and excuse for a single course of action that is a zero-sum game. Knowledge is not. Frank Stanton saw that the "interests" of news subscribed to this theory of knowledge, a theory that hasn't disappeared but has long since departed the television box.

See: Frank Stanton, in the New York Times article about his passing