Technology + [fill in the blank]
Years ago amazing visionary, mentor, colleague, and friend Brian Cantwell Smith (philosopher, computer scientist, and brilliant idea generator) described Philosophy as the hallway from which all other disciplines were doorways. Physics, Art, Literature, and so on — the analogy works — they all open from a foundation of philosophical thought, inquiry, and critical awareness. For Philosophy, especially in the USA, this seminal position as the foundation of everything has waned for a number of reasons within the Academy, but the analogy seems so apt it should live on.
To that end, I’ll carry it further — if philosophy and philosophical thought are the hallway, then technology is the air duct (breathing new ideas and thoughts into all disciplines), and the electrical wiring (connecting heretofore separate “schools” of thought with new, energetic ways of doing things), and it is the lighting system (shedding light on new ways of visualizing, conceptualizing, and sharing information).
Technology is no longer a luxury enjoyed by only the World Wide Web countries (US, Europe, Asia) and technological solutions are far from being just for technologists – it is core to everything we do, to all “disciplines”. In the sciences there is a great amount of work going on in 3D areas — that innovation is moving to the Humanities too. The Arts have a close connection with technology that can be seen in digital media departments at top Universities: NYU UCLA. The work going on in Law schools in intellectual property reflects the new issues created with digital media, its ownership and use. Libraries and Information Schools are tackling new ways to archive and “preserve” digital assets. There are now large bodies of work in digital archives: http://www.whitmanarchive.org/ Biologists are making new discoveries by using new technology. In health there is amazing work going into visualizing data, showing trends and properties of data that may not have been seen before the tools existed. Surgery is being transformed by robotics work – robot-assisted surgery. Every discipline has incorporated innovations in technology into their research, methodologies, and practices.
We are all using new technology and Web 2.0 solutions in our everyday lives to find and form new communities, to collaborate, to communicate, and to share: Instant Messaging, Skype (VoIP), Google Docs, RSS feeds, podcasting. The question is no longer whether or not to make use of technology – the question now is how. At Intrah I’m joining a team that asks this question and works to find innovative ways of using new and existing technologies to make healthcare information accessible where it is needed most.
