An exciting day at SU

Guess what? It's not surprising. But yesterday was another exciting day at SU.

Obama's Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, gave a talk here about the government's efforts to innovate. One of the biggest trend is data liberation. I love how they use the word, liberation...very fitting.

They put out 3 challenges related to energy, open healthcare, and education. The government is seeing collaboration and crowd sourcing as a new trend, which is very in rhythm of what we are doing here. I like this guy a lot. So I asked him, how the government can ensure that these wonderful initiatives will continue after this election term. And he didn't answer but said he would look into that. I was expecting that he would talk about engaging private sector to help take these initiatives beyond the election term.

Another talk was by Stewart Brand about leveraging technology to benefit humanity and environment. I asked him a very hard question with respect to the risk of a country (i.e. Pakistan and India) developing nuclear weapons after it adopted Atoms for Peace project purported by Eisenhower.

Read more here.

Oh and we went to Intuitive Surgical. I couldn't believe that almost everything was assembled by hands.....It's so outdated. Anyways, it was not impressive for me. And they use pigs for testing their devices. I hate it. What can I do now? unethical. How can we justify taking away a life that's not even our own? hurr....I hate how we are using animals in our research and education.