Category Archives: Blog

A few weeks ago, I saw a piece in the news about a school system that’s issuing students IDs to check in and off their school buses. Via use of radio frequency, the school can tell which kids are on the bus, where the bus is located, and where the kids get off. Eventually, parents will be able to monitor their kids’ bus rides in real time. I’m sure that plenty of folks are already keeping tabs on their bus-riders using smartphones, but not all kids have smartphones, especially the little ones. I’m sure that if this technology had been around when my kids were in school, we would have been happy to have access to this tracking info when our kids were small.

The story got me thinking about what other technology is being used in schools.

The most obvious is, of course, virtually learning, which came to the fore during covid.

No argument here that the online meeting technology has made great strides over the years. (Does anyone else remember a few decades back, when visuals were added to what had been phone-based meetings? The latency could be jarring: quaking voices and jerky movements.) Even though the meeting tech has vastly improved, and there are many features – raised hands, breakout rooms, pop quizzes, project collaboration – that make online learning more engaging, I’m still a fan of classroom learning when it comes to kids.

Within the classroom, technology has many uses. Here are a few that I came across in a blog from Go Guardian, a digital learning vendor.

Today’s students are digital natives, with no memory of a world without smartphones, tablets, and ubiquitous apps. I’ve seen toddlers, barely able to walk or talk, occupying themselves with their folks’ phones. So gamified learning is a natural, and something that kids will find engaging. And who knows? Maybe playing a spelling game is more effective than writing those spelling words out ten times.

I love the idea of digital field trips. Nothing wrong with giving the kids an occasional break from the classroom routine with a field trip to a museum, a park, a concert, an historic attraction. But not every school is within school-bus distance of interesting attractions. And even if there are plenty of things to do in your immediate area, a digital field trip can bring students to Yellowstone Park, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China. A virtual trip to Paul Revere’s House and Concord Bridge could augment a lesson on the American Revolution.

A variation on this theme is incorporating video/multimedia lessons and presentations within the curriculum. Kids learn in different ways, and using “visual effects, photos, videos, and music” in lessons will let the teacher reach and engage with students with different learning styles. Having “guest speakers” present is another idea here. (No replacement, IMHO, for local folks – parents, grandparents, et al. – coming into the classroom and interacting with the students!)

Many of today’s kids – maybe even most of them – will graduate into a world where digital skills are required. So having students create digital content that’s related to what their learning gives them a chance to show off their creativity and hone their communications skills.

Some kids are faster learners than others, so I really like the idea of online activities for students who finish work early. That sure beats twiddling your thumbs, staring out the window, or pretending you’re still working.

I’m less enamored of the idea of integrating social media into the classroom, but I suppose learning to do social media right can help students become more aware of the pitfalls and discerning about misinformation.

Anyway, my kids are no longer in school, but as a tech guy, I like the idea of incorporating technology into the learning experience. After all, technology plays an increasingly important part in pretty much all aspects of what we do. That said, I still hope there’s plenty of offline time for quiet activities and for the kids to interact with their teachers and each other the old-fashioned way!

There’s been no escaping the news about the drastic heat being experienced throughout the Southwest and the South this summer. And if you live in those regions, there’s been no escaping heat that’s been well above 100 degrees for days, even weeks, at a time. We don’t have heat like that in Central New York. At least not yet. We do typically have a number of 90+ days, and that number has been creeping up.

The last few summers have been hotter than average in Central New York with 15, 18, and 21 90+ degree days in the summer of 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Remember, the average number of 90+ degree days in Syracuse each year is 10 over the last 30+ years. (Source: LocalSYR.com)

But 100+ days remain a rarity. At least for now.

I can only imagine how difficult it must be to live and work in that kind of heat.

As the earth continues to heat up, most scientists predict that there’ll be more and more of what would have once been considered weather anomalies – the new normal will be abnormal.

The good news is that there are many technologists focusing on ways to remediate the effects of global warming.

One such technologist is a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering Xiulin Ruan, who has been working for years to develop a white paint that can cool buildings down without the side effects produced by a massive use traditional air conditioning.

In 2020, Dr. Ruan and his team unveiled their creation: a type of white paint that can act as a reflector, bouncing 95 percent of the sun’s rays away from the Earth’s surface, up through the atmosphere and into deep space. A few months later, they announced an even more potent formulation that increased sunlight reflection to 98 percent.

The paint’s properties are almost superheroic. It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up to 19 degrees cooler at night, reducing temperatures inside buildings and decreasing air-conditioning needs by as much as 40 percent. It is cool to the touch, even under a blazing sun, Dr. Ruan said. Unlike air-conditioners, the paint doesn’t need any energy to work, and it doesn’t warm the outside air. (Source: NY Times)

The paint was developed with rooftops in mind, but there are other applications in the making. E.g., a “more lightweight version that could reflect heat from vehicles.”

I’m always delighted to see my fellow engineers getting in on the act of improving life here on earth. One is Jeremy Munday, who is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UCal-Davis.

He calculated that if materials such as Purdue’s ultra-white paint were to coat between 1 percent and 2 percent of the Earth’s surface, slightly more than half the size of the Sahara, the planet would no longer absorb more heat than it was emitting, and global temperatures would stop rising.

This would not, of course, be as simple as white-topping half the Sahara Desert. It would have to be spread across many settings in many regions, with checks in place to make sure that weather disruptions and other unintended consequences aren’t introduced.

The Purdue white paint, which should be available commercially next year sometime, is not a panacea. The challenge is a complex one, with many intertwined economic, political, geopolitical, environmental, and cultural implications. And it’s not going to be solved overnight.

Nonetheless:

Large-scale radiative cooling, Dr. Munday said, would be akin to a life raft.

“This is definitely not a long-term solution to the climate problem,” Dr. Munday said. “This is something you can do short term to mitigate worse problems while trying to get everything under control.”

Meanwhile, one of the unintended consequences of Xiulin Ruan’s work was that, in 2021, Guinness named the Purdue ultra-white page “the whitest paint ever.”

Guinness Book of World Records aside, it’s good to see that solutions are being developed that will help “get everything under control” and give Mother Earth some more breathing room. So I’m all for the Purdue paint, hoping that it produces a new and different white coat effect.

With the vacation season at its peak, it’s time to take a look at the technology that’s becoming more and more prevalent in the travel and hospitality industry.

These days, it seems quaint to see someone getting on a plane with an old-school paper boarding pass. And many restaurants have a QR code on the table that lets you access the menu (and, in some places, even order your meal.)

The hotel industry is also investing heavily in technology.

Travelers of a certain age may remember when you were handed a key on a large fob, making it pretty difficult to lose. (In Europe, the keys were sometimes kept on a longish wooden handle – too long to comfortably carry them around with you, so you left it at the lobby desk when you left the hotel and retrieved it when you needed to get back in your room.)

Most hotels have long since replaced mechanical keys with electronic cards that you insert, swipe, or tap.

Those smart cards are starting to look as old fashioned as the key on the fob, however, as digital room keys are increasingly being deployed, using bar or QR codes. These are similar to the digital tickets we’ve been using for a while for sports events, concerts, and the theater, but are relatively new to the hotel scene. (Since you didn’t keep your hotel key anyway, it’s no great loss to go digital, but, for those who liked to keep ticket stubs as souvenirs, the digital route is less than welcome. I suppose folks can print out an image of their barcode, or save it as some sort of personal NFT…)

Digital keys are just part of the growing use of technology in hotels.

The reservation process has long been online, either through a hotel or chain website, or through a general-purpose booking or travel aggregator, but since covid “contactless check in” via phone app or self-service kiosks are now available in many hotels.

And with so many people abandoning any use of cash, tipping apps are appearing so that travelers can tip “service workers like valets, housekeepers, bartenders, and bell staff.

Digital tipping apps [are now in use that] allow guests to leave tips via credit cards or other digital payment methods. By scanning a QR code or clicking a link, guests can access the platform, and the platform handles tipping employees out. (Source: Hotel Tech Report)

Not to mention all sorts of in-the-room tech that Amy Tara Koch, a NY Times travel writer, recently encountered.

Koch’s encounter with a tech-ified Swiss hotel was not all that pleasant. When she went to turn in, she found that a TV disguised as a bathroom mirror had been turned on as part of the turndown service. She couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. Koch also couldn’t find a phone in the room and figured it was just as direct to walk down to the reception desk and see if she could find someone to turn the “smart mirror” off. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize she was also going to need assistance in turning the bathroom lights off. All part of “the glut of smart technology in hotel rooms.”

Some of that technology is devoted to improving the guest experience.

Neha Jaitpal, the global general manager for Honeywell’s Building Technologies sector, oversees “intuitive” solutions for more than 2 million hotel rooms worldwide, working for companies like Accor and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. “Imagine arriving at your hotel room after a long day of travel, and it’s already adjusted to your preferred settings — from the temperature, lighting and even the position of the drapes,” she said. “Through automation, guest rooms can be personalized without the need for human interaction.” (Source: NY Times)

Smartphones are being used to play music, book a spa session, order room service, request extra towels. Pretty much any hotel service you can think of.

And that is improving the guest experience. For some guests, anyway.

Koch is not one of them.

These “guest enhancements,” touted as in-demand by hoteliers and the tech companies that make them, are not in demand by me.

And Koch isn’t alone.

“I used to walk into a hotel room and relax. Now it is a job to figure out how to use the lights and switch off the television, which, of course, is set to the hotel’s promotional station,” said Jill Weinberg, 67, a regional director with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and like me, a frustrated hotel guest. “Here is an entirely new system to waste mental energy upon every single time I travel.”

Some hotels are actively resisting the embrace of technology. Beyond making Wi-Fi available, and maybe using a smart room key, travelers turn on the lights using a switch; turn on the TV using a remote; and pull open the drapes the old-fashioned way.

All very interesting, but as anyone who’s been watching emerging technology for years knows, there’s something inexorable about the technification of our day-to-day experiences.

The travel season is upon us, and those who will be flying somewhere are probably gearing up for the security hassle they’ll find at the TSA checkpoint.

There’s getting your ID out, and (maybe) your boarding pass – old-school paper or on your phone. (Remind me again where I need to show it.) Then there’s juggling your identification with your carry-on luggage. And, if you’re traveling with your family, hanging on to your kids.

Then there’s your stuff.

Laptop out? Laptop open? Tablet? Kindle? Phone?

Did you remember to put all your liquids in a 1 quart baggie? Are all those liquids smaller than 3.4 ounces? Is toothpaste a liquid? Is peanut butter?

It goes without saying that we all want to be safe when we fly, but at times contending with the protocols can be an irritant when all you want to do is make it to your gate on time.

Fortunately, the TSA has been introducing technology that will expedite the process. The new tech will help on two fronts: ID checking to make sure that you’re the same person who’s ticketed on the flight; and making screening your carry-ons more convenient.

In many airports throughout the country, the TSA uses Credential Authentication Technology (CAT) to help travelers speed up their journey through security. There are two different types of CAT machines in use. With CAT-1 machines, which were introduced in 2019 and are now in use in 200 American airports, you don’t need to show your boarding pass to get through, just some form of approved ID (driver’s license, passport).

CAT-1…scans and analyzes a passenger’s photo ID and then automatically confirms their flight details through the Secure Flight database along with their pre-screening status (like if they have TSA PreCheck) in real time. (Source: Travel & Leisure)

While you do still need your boarding pass to get on the plane, the CAT-1 machines mean that there’s one less piece of paper (or phone app) to worry about at security.

Better yet are the CAT-2 machines, which rely on facial recognition technology. So far, these are in test mode, and are only deployed in 16 airports, with plans to increase the numbers to 28.

…unlike the first generation of machines [the Cat-1’s], the CAT-2 units are also equipped with a camera that can compare the photo ID with a real-time photo of the passenger. They are also equipped with a reader capable of scanning a state-issued digital driver’s license or digital identification card, according to the TSA.

Using biometric technology automates the process, replacing the human element that required the TSA agent to examine an ID and then look at the traveler’s face.

Travelers who don’t want to go through security via the facial recognition technology can opt out, but be assured that the photos taken are overwritten by the picture taken of the next traveler, and memory is entirely purged when the agent logs off.

Even more welcome, as far as I’m concerned, is the introduction of new Computed Tomography x-ray machines. These new machines take 3D images of your carry on. They’re a new and improved way for agents to identify “weapons, explosives, and other banned items.” For those of us who don’t typically carry these sorts of items, this technology is also what will let us keep our electronics and mini-shampoo bottles in our carry-on bags.

So far, unless you’re over 75 years of age or have TSA PreCheck, you’ll still need to take your shoes off to pass through security. Hopefully, technology to take care of that bit of hassle will be available soon as well.

Safe travels!