OPINION

The Newest ‘Information Technology’ Is Actually the Oldest

Terry Calhoun, Commentator
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP)
University of Michigan

During a trip to Portland last week, for the North American Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education, I read several books. (I always carry reading material to handle any amount of down time at airports or in the air.) One of them was a science fiction novel that reminded me, in terms of the science involved, of the sort of stuff that was being written about mechanical space travel in the decades before we actually ended up going to the moon.

More specifically, this book extrapolated out from some of the current research that is either minimally-developed or only now seen as near-term possible due to the sequencing of the human genome and the kinds of multidisciplinary research that is going to be happening in all of those “life sciences centers” popping up on campuses. At some point down the line, and not in the far future, we’re going to have to be thinking a little more carefully about what we now consider to be “technology.”

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IT NEWS

Europe Expected to Agree to Deal for PeopleSoft

The European Commission is expected to okay Oracle’s takeover of PeopleSoft. And in a Delaware Court, a judge may soon rule against much of PeopleSoft’s “poison pill” defense. Seems like the beginning of the end. (New York Times)
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UC Berkeley System Suffers Biggest Hack Yet

Personal information about 1.4 million California citizens, including social security numbers, was taken from a university faculty researcher’s hard drive as a result of a compromise of the network. (CNET News.com)
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Virginia Tech’s System X Faster, but Falls Behind

This new supercomputer passed the 12.25-teraflop benchmark to take fourth place in the world’s fastest computer competition, and first place in the academically owned supercomputer competition. It consists of 1,100 custom-built Xserve Apple servers, each with two G5 processors running at 2.3 GHz. (Wired News)

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Google Takes On Your Desktop

“The program can recall any bit of text that ever passed in front of your eyeballs, in a fraction of a second. You don’t even have to remember where you read something (e-mail, Web, instant message, document); you have to remember only what it was about.” (New York Times)
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Dartmouth Student Government Overhauling BlitzMail Terminals

The 48 seven-year-old terminals are more and more frequently causing problems and crashing. The student government plans to replace them with eMacs by offering $10k if the college matches with another $10k. (The Dartmouth Online)
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University of Michigan’s West Quad to Get IT Upgrades

$12.2M will be spent on fire protection, electrical, and information technology enhancements to the huge old dorm, which had its last major update in 1985. West Quad houses 1,200 students. (The Michigan Daily)
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Raising a Ruckus On Campus

Alfred State College (State University of New York), Bentley College, and Northern Illinois University are launching Ruckus Network on their campuses to provide a wide spectrum of programmed entertainment for students and others, delivered via the Internet. (PR Newswire)
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RESOURCES

America’s Most Connected Campuses

Forbes has released a special report that identifies the most connected campuses in the US.

This survey’s Top Ten are:
1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
2. Bryant University
3. DePauw University
4. Temple University
5. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
6. Cornell University
7. Duquesne University
8. The Catholic University of America
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. University of Georgia

“These schools aren’t just teaching technology, they are embracing it,” the report says. (Forbes.com)
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DEALS, CONTRACTS, AWARDS

Score One for the Penguins

Regis University in Denver has installed CanIt-PRO, Roaring Penguin’s Anti-spam Product, to help protect e-mail for its 16,000 students.
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CalTech Signs Multi-Year eProcurement Agreement

The university will implement the complete suite of SciQuest’s Higher Markets eProcurement solutions, adding to its existing Oracle Financials system.
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Macromedia Partners with MERLOT to Extend Portal

MERLOT and Macromedia announced a collaborative agreement to strengthen MERLOT’s online academic communities. MERLOT will use Macromedia’s Contribute 3 to build a set of Internet portals—one gateway for each of its 15 academic disciplines.
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