Technology For Technology's Sake

Perhaps you've heard the buzz about the "hologram" technology that was used during the CNN Presidential Election coverage Tuesday night. With this technology, CNN made it look as if a reporter and a rapper who were inside a tent in Chicago were actually standing in the CNN studios in Atlanta.

If you saw this during the broadcast or replayed sometime afterward, you might have been pretty excited by it. And it did look really cool, sort of like Princess Leia coming out of the little projector built into R2-D2.

And one could immediately come up with very real uses for this hologram projection device. Imagine a board meeting in New York City where two of the members couldn't be there in person because they're off on business somewhere else in the world--say, one in Los Angeles and the other in Tokyo. They could sit at a table in Tokyo or L.A. surrounded by the cameras of this device, and they could be holographically "beamed" into an emptry seat at the board meeting in New York City?

Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it? But there's a problem: The hologram that the CNN reporters spoke to wasn't a real hologram. It was just an impage superimposed over the image of the CNN reporter standing alone in a room. The person could only "magically" appear on a television screen.

So then what was the point of this flashy hologram technology? I can answer that for you in four words. Loud and clear:

There was no point!

This was an example of technology for technology's sake, and it infuriates me. In my day job I am constantly bombarded with people wanting me to purchase them something because it's "cool." When I ask what educational value it has, how it's going to help us educate children, I often find they have no answer. And when that happens, I give them a flat out "no" in reply.

Sometimes, though, these people find someone else to buy their toys for them, and, if that someone is a superior of mine, I often end up supporting that piece of technology anyway. One example I can give you is the keycard security system that we have at all of our schools. All of the doors in a building are locked, and staff members have to swipe a keycard to gain entry. It is an absolute pain in the butt to setup and maintain this system, issuing keycards and reprogramming servers and doors when a new keycard is given out. And what's the point in the whole system? Supposedly there are two: 1) To keep "bad people" out so that the students are safe, and 2) to track who comes in and out of the building in the case of vandalism or theft or something like that.

Those are both laudable goals, but there's a problem with each. First, in regards to keeping track of people who come in and out of the system, only SOME of the doors at each school have these electronic locks on them. The remaining doors have standard locks, meaning that someone with a master key can come and go through those doors and never be detected by the system. Second, though the doors give the impression the buidling is secure, they're not. I know this for a fact: If an adult knocks on a door, the vast majority of students are going to let that person into the building, no matter how many times they're told not to do so. I often don't have my keys with me, and only once has a student refused to let me into the building. Once I finally gained acccess I went and found that student and congratulated him for doing what he was supposed to be doing.

So the doors don't offer any real protection. They offer the feeling of protection, which is really a waste. The whole system is a gigantic waste of my time.

Just like the hologram from CNN, it serves no purpose.

If you haven't seen the hologram at work, you can watch it below.