Douglas Fisher

Its Sunday afternoon — I’m at the Arlington library. It has been a while since I sent an update and wanted to touch base.

I try and venture out at least once a weekend to DC when I’m in town, because too many people (according to their reports) spend their rotations in the DC area, thinking that they can see the city anytime, and end up, therefore, never seeing it. Sounds familiar. In any case last weekend I went to Christ Church on Capital Hill, then went to the Botanical Gardens, and the Mall. I snapped some pictures, which you can find at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/DouglasHayesFisher/

Yesterday, I went to a climate change rally at the base of the Lincoln Memorial (and forgot my camera!!). I am not shown in either picture found at  http://stepitup2007.org/article.php?id=697 – I ended up on the cutting room floor, I guess, just off camera … but I was holding up my green finger too ) In any case, I was moved by it … to my surprise it was a relatively small gathering, I thought…it made me gladder that I went, to be a worker among workers.

After the rally I went up to the Lincoln Memorial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial )– the statue of President Lincoln, watching over the Mall, gives a sense of what I imagine was the majesty of the man. Here was a guy that appointed men to his cabinet that disagreed with him. The Gettysburg address is on one side wall, and the second inauguration speech is on the other. This was all emotionally moving as well, despite the crowd, or maybe more so, because of it – I really don’t know.

Then to the Korean War memorial, a description of which you can find at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War_Veterans_Memorial (in both this case and the case of the Lincoln Memorial, the Wikipedia sites seem more complete than the National Park Service sites, at least overtly). I have to read more about the symbolism of the memorial – its main feature are statues representing a squad on patrol … but the most astounding thing I found about the whole memorial was this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Korean_Memorial3.JPG . The number of our-side dead (and the US/UN proportions for missing and wounded are roughly the same) blew me away. The park service Website lists American dead as the number of dead (and I think that I’m going to email them about this), but that doesn’t do justice I think to either the
Memorial designers for recognizing the greater whole and greater loss, or for the sacrifice itself, which is being memorialized. In any case, I was moved again, in this case, because the UN dead was acknowledged and the UN countries were engraved in the stone. This whole worker among workers thing gets to me, positively, more and more, be it worker individuals or worker nations, ….

Its getting cold here, and while I love the cold crispness (my nickname in college was “Polar Bear”). I walked to the Hospice Thrift Store in Falls Church last week. Its a little place with some endearing features ..I didn’t take to any of the warm coats they had, but found a beautiful London Fog raincoat with warmish liner marked at $16 … took it to the
counter glad to not go home empty handed, because its a long walk. I started chatting it up with the elderly ladies behind the counter … very charming … and the one that is searching for the tag excitedly shouts that I’ve got a $1 special … “You HAVE the special!!” … the coat has a blue price tag and all stuff with blue tags are $1 that day !!! Much excitement behind the counter and in line among the other customers … much, much excitement … me too!! I payed $1.05 with tax, and fifty cents for the recycled plastic bag to carry it home…. as AJ would say … fantastico!! I’m going back…need some pants.

I am alive and well in Arlington, VA. I am at the Arlington Public library, which is where I spend some of my evenings and weekends with personal email, looking out over a park,
people watching, Goggleing, etc.

My apartment on the 18th floor is being furnished through Internet purchases, and I am about done for phase 1 — am awaiting an inflatable easy-chair to complement an
inflatable bed, and inflatable sofa (with an inflatable foldout bed !!!!), a regular “card” table with two regular fold-out chairs, a regular floor lamp, desk lamp (…regular), and a regular chair for the balcony. I decided to start off spartan, because I know that once I get something familiar I’ll fall back into unconsciously, comfortable ways. I have a coffee maker, BTW !!! No TV — not yet, perhaps not never, while here (?? hard to imagine, right now, no TV set or a year or so, but thats the point!!) … but I did get a couple of DVDs at the good ol’ Arlington library to watch on my laptop at night when the audio/visual withdrawal was too overwhelming, and I also stumbled upon a CD by Ashley Cleveland …
“you are there” … a great cover of “Gimme Shelter” … and “Lucky Never Had It So Good” is a great song. The Arlington library classifies the CD as “ROCK” … thats right!!

My balcony is large and way high up. I fought a battle with two pidgeons that were hanging around with a tenacity that was disturbing — I tried to shoo them away, because they were soiling my balcony … turns out that they have a nest with babies on the neighboring balcony…I no longer take their presence as a disrespect directed at me,
my annoyance is less, and live and let live is a bit easier …. .. and I’m doing some artistic things to discourage them from my balcony … a “scare hawk” … we’ll see.

“Green IT”, where “IT” stands for “Information Technology”, is a breaking wave — it’s breaking NOW! It’s not a fad, but is important for a number of reasons, some of which are touched on in this Scientific American article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=digital-diet&sc=rss.  

The first is that Computing (aka Information Technology) has an increasingly large ecological footprint — Computing is becoming part of the problem. Green IT refers to development of environmentally-friendlier computing technology and infrastructuture, and it includes concerns with the environmental costs of computer manufacture and disposal — disposal, in particular, can release toxins, which is not an aspect of computing’s burden on the environment that is touched on by the Scientific American article.

A second point is that Computing can be part of larger susatainability strategies, as suggested in the opening lines of the article. Computing and communication technology can be used, for example, to offset ecological footprints in the travel sector. My experience is that meetings can be effectively run over the phone (with headset or speaker/mic), perhaps augmented with online conferencing software of various sorts. Some might respond “A teleconference just isn’t like being there one-on-one”. No, its not — sometimes its better! And it depends to a great extent on the purpose of the activity. Sometimes a lower bandwidth helps a group meet goals — I want a domineering, inconsiderate personality to operate with smaller bandwidth, for example. If you and I are trying to survive in the jungle, I want you there side by side, but to reach a decision on an academic paper, teleconference can work very well, perhaps while we both look at a source document over the Web. That said, there are interactions that can’t be captured by teleconference — sometimes we just have to sacrifice. If giving up some of the nicities of traveling to an airport, getting on a plane, often delayed, etc etc etc so that I can attend a one-day meeting and return, is the hardest thing that I have to do in response to severe environmental problems, I’ll count myself very lucky. There are of course other technologies, like Web calls and virtual worlds, which may evolve to a point, pushed by a new generation of computing professionals (see below), where they become effective tools for environmentally-friendlier human interaction.

I’ve only rambled on here about computing and communication technology’s possible offset in the travel sector. There are many other applications for direct and indirect environmental benifits of computing, such as embedded computing’s role in smart buildings and vehicles, the use of computing for ecological modeling and data analysis, and as an educational and public awareness tool (e.g., an ecologically-friendly island in Second Life).

A third point, one that I really didn’t appreciate until now, is that Computing companies — because they are energy hogs, because they are societally powerful, because their leadership is business savy and environmentally/societally responsible — may push the transition to alternative energy sources at a rate that is much faster than might otherwise be expected — that is just fantastic! If technological advances to the foundations of the automobile happened at a rate that approximated the advances in computing, we’d have cars that would be cleaning the air and sequestering carbon (? ) … and now computing companies may trigger societal advances, which they have done already of course, but perhaps now, like never before, along planned trajectories. 

Green IT, broadly construed as including computing as part of larger sustainability strategies, is a massive, breaking wave (see also www.oecd.org/sti/ict/green-ict for example), which can be used by educators as a way of embedding computing in social and environmental contexts. The people that go to college nowadays are like every past generation, I’m sure – most of them are motivated by a lot more than money. Computing educators should have answers to their question — “Why, in a world of rapid global climate change, and birth defects, autism, cancer stemming from environmental poisoning, of resource conflicts such as seen in Darfur  – why on Earth would I study Computer Science — even if I loved it — even if I were really good at it?!” We can have answers to this and like questions.