Delft ICT Research Center held its first annual meeting in the Aula, hosting an international crowd of students and researchers to study the ‘human element’ in technology.
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Once upon a time people used homing pigeons, human messengers and signal fires to send messages. Today, it’s Internet and cell phones, and networks that keep our global communication systems running. The current communication challenge is to create networks that allow for ‘ubiquitous’ (anywhere, anytime) and ‘unobtrusive’ communications.
Delft ICT Research Centre’s first annual meeting was meant to contribute toward finding solutions for the networks of tomorrow, with a particular focus on the human dimension, or ’the user’s environment’, aptly described by the acronym WEIP (Wireless Environment and Intelligent Products). During this meeting, researchers discussed the latest ICT wireless communication technologies, including intelligent sensing and audio/video processing.
ICT Delft’s event was well attended by TU staff and students, and also had an international character. UC Berkeley (USA) Professor Jan Rabaey was on hand to lecture on ‘Disappearing electronics’ and students from other Dutch universities were also in attendance. “It was a very interesting meeting, a good opportunity to get to know what’s going on in Delft,” said Hailiang Mei, a Chinese doing research at TU Eindhoven.
Exhibitions of the latest technologies ranged from the seemingly frivolous, a robotic ‘entertainment dog’, to the serious, electromagnetic wave pollution. “This robot dog’s amazing!” one student watching the dog’s demonstration exclaimed. “The dog can stand, kneel and crouch just like a real dog. He can even play soccer, and when his battery’s running low, he immediately goes and sits down on his recharging seat. Cool!”
Some students were troubled by the thought of electromagnetic wave pollution’s impact on human life. “Technology’s changing, becoming more complex without us knowing the consequences,” said Bao Lihn Dang, a Vietnamese PhD student. “There are so many frequencies all around us, everywhere, but we cannot see and touch them. Maybe this isn’t healthy for people.”
Another area of interest was wireless security. TU Delft recently launched wireless LAN on campus and some people are concerned about WLAN security. As one student remarked: “Imagine if someone puts his computer somewhere on the campus and records all he hears onto his hard disk. That guy’s hard disk would be full of valuable goodies.”
Technological advancement is a symphony full of joy tempered with sorrow. While technology undoubtedly benefits human beings, it also has some negative impacts on human beings. This meeting stressed that people should thing deeply about this, and, as Professor Patrick DeWilde said in his closing remarks, concentrate on making technology “with the human being and for the human being”.
Once upon a time people used homing pigeons, human messengers and signal fires to send messages. Today, it’s Internet and cell phones, and networks that keep our global communication systems running. The current communication challenge is to create networks that allow for ‘ubiquitous’ (anywhere, anytime) and ‘unobtrusive’ communications.
Delft ICT Research Centre’s first annual meeting was meant to contribute toward finding solutions for the networks of tomorrow, with a particular focus on the human dimension, or ’the user’s environment’, aptly described by the acronym WEIP (Wireless Environment and Intelligent Products). During this meeting, researchers discussed the latest ICT wireless communication technologies, including intelligent sensing and audio/video processing.
ICT Delft’s event was well attended by TU staff and students, and also had an international character. UC Berkeley (USA) Professor Jan Rabaey was on hand to lecture on ‘Disappearing electronics’ and students from other Dutch universities were also in attendance. “It was a very interesting meeting, a good opportunity to get to know what’s going on in Delft,” said Hailiang Mei, a Chinese doing research at TU Eindhoven.
Exhibitions of the latest technologies ranged from the seemingly frivolous, a robotic ‘entertainment dog’, to the serious, electromagnetic wave pollution. “This robot dog’s amazing!” one student watching the dog’s demonstration exclaimed. “The dog can stand, kneel and crouch just like a real dog. He can even play soccer, and when his battery’s running low, he immediately goes and sits down on his recharging seat. Cool!”
Some students were troubled by the thought of electromagnetic wave pollution’s impact on human life. “Technology’s changing, becoming more complex without us knowing the consequences,” said Bao Lihn Dang, a Vietnamese PhD student. “There are so many frequencies all around us, everywhere, but we cannot see and touch them. Maybe this isn’t healthy for people.”
Another area of interest was wireless security. TU Delft recently launched wireless LAN on campus and some people are concerned about WLAN security. As one student remarked: “Imagine if someone puts his computer somewhere on the campus and records all he hears onto his hard disk. That guy’s hard disk would be full of valuable goodies.”
Technological advancement is a symphony full of joy tempered with sorrow. While technology undoubtedly benefits human beings, it also has some negative impacts on human beings. This meeting stressed that people should thing deeply about this, and, as Professor Patrick DeWilde said in his closing remarks, concentrate on making technology “with the human being and for the human being”.
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