Tech in the City: Public Transportation

I posted a question to my Google+ profile asking folks about the state of public transportation in their area.  I receieved a miriad of responses that pretty much criss-crossed the country.  Here are a fewbelow (link to the actual post is here)

Romeo Rosado - In Chicago riding a bus or train is a way of life for everyone. Especially in a city where on street parking is so expensive. $80 gets you a monthly for the Cta (city bus and train) then there's Metra which runs from downtown to the various burbs all around the city. And its like in NYC, everybody rides. From the ceo, to the server at the country club.

Simeon Weinraub - I live in Los Angeles.  Where we have a bus with a (yes, I said a as in one)dedicated lane, people use it. The rest of our system is over-crowded buses, stuck in the same traffic as everybody else. They are building more light rail now, but the construction costs are astronomical, and the securing the right-of-way is a constant political struggle.

Meanwhile, simple and cheap solutions are ignored for prestige projects. We have two large streets that run parallel from the beach to downtown, that all studies show would reduce traffic if they were made one in opposite directions, but some how people have blocked that. We are spending billions widening the 405 freeway, but just to add a high occupancy vehicle lane (2 or more people), not a bus lane, nor light rail (we currently have two train lines that run on the existing right-of-way of a freeway, and those trains get used, they never get caught at crossings, they are never blocked by traffic, and nobody had to have their house knocked over to build them.)

I can say that the two newest rail lines are great! The Gold line runs from Pasadena to East LA in arc through Downtown LA, through all kinds of neighborhood, in a way that is actually useful. And the new Expo line that is opening this year will go from Downtown LA, to the beach in Santa Monica, in a paththat actually stops where people need to go.

Lark Fleming - In LA middle class people in general don't use public transit. It's becoming more common among people who are younger, but people in the 30ish range and older it is pretty rare. In LA pt is viewed as something gross. It's getting better in regards to perception, but it's still rare to be like me (have the money to buy a car and maintain a car) and to not own a car.

Also it's easier to take public transit's more desirable mode, the train, if you live in the more gentrified higher priced neighborhoods. In LA public transit is not exactly a choice, because the poorer neighborhoods and less desirable neighborhoods have very limited transit or very unfavorable transit. In LA if you''re a poor single mom you can't afford to take public transit. Many working class jobs in LA require you to own a car in order to apply.

Laya White - Baltimore's public transportation is somewhere in the middle - not as great as larger cities but not the worst either. The one subway line and the one Light Rail line are primarily for commuters traveling in and out of the city. We also have the Marc Train, which runs between Baltimore, DC, and WV. If you're traveling within the city it's primarily by bus, and the bus system has come a long way in the last 10 years.  Getting around the city is one thing but if you're trying to get to or around many of the suburbs and nearby communities, or to and from DC on the weekend, you are SOL.

darren keith - St. Louis fails to realize that in order to grow a city sometimes you have to spend money. St. Louis and labor has always wanted something for nothing when it comes to wages. This city fails to realize that we are all in the same boat. It just irks me that this country of ours has one of the worst public transportation in the world.

Erin McCargar - Nashville's system is pretty much bus only, with one commuter rail line from satellite city into town that stops in one suburb. While they finally created a decent bus depot downtown, the buses themselves are of highly varying quality, and from all reports are a pain to use, usually adding 4-5 hours to a trip of any real length.

Jasmine Lee - I live in Houston and public transportation here is a mess. The bus system has an okay route system in the city and limited routes outside the city limits. If you live in the suburbs there are park and ride stations here and there (so you still need a car to ride the bus if you live in the 'burbs). We finally got a train that goes from downtown to the medical center, but unless you work or live in that area, you still need a car. I would love to have the option to ride a train or bus to work.

Derek Arnold -  In Cleveland and Akron (where I was raised and where I currently live, respectively), as in a lot of the midwest, the "mass transit is for poor folks" mantra is often repeated. I spent the first 33 years in life without a car because of industrious use of transit (I could get most of where I wanted/needed to go but it put some jobs/opportunities out of touch without some help). I would certainly take mass transit to/from work but because I live in the core city (Akron) and work in a suburb of another core city (Solon, OH--suburb of Cleveland), it would take several hours a day to commute.

Raphaela Weissman - Seattle transportation consists entirely of semi-reliable buses. A lot of the goings-on in the city are catered to drivers (sample conversation at a new job: Employer: "Now, parking can be tricky..." Me: "I don't have a car." Employer: "Okay. Well, just so you know... [10 minute speech about parking].")

What Has Kept Me Interested in Tech?

The above video is a great example of the mind of Steve Jobs. It goes beyond tech. It's about finding your true interests, passions, and converting those into a way of life.

I wasn't always an Apple person. As a matter of fact, I still have never used their desktops / laptops because I prefer the upgradeability of a desktop PC.  But I've dived headfirst into the iOS ecosystem, and now I own an iPhone 4, and iPad 2, and an Apple TV 2nd Gen. What happened?

Jobs didn't put form over function or vice versa. He held them both equally important. Function would always attract the geeks, but form is what gets the average person to fall in love with a tech product.

At about the 5 minute mark, Steve says:

You have to trust in something ... because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off of the well worn path

Well said, sir. 

Old School Tech: Eastern State Penitentiary

Click the photo for the entire photo album

Eastern State Penitentiary is truly one of Philadelphia's great places to visit.  A huge prison in the middle of the city!  It took quite a bit of tech to keep this institution running for almost two hundred years.

A little background from the website: 

Opened in 1829 as part of a controversial movement to change the behavior of inmates through "confinement in solitude with labor," Eastern State Penitentiary quickly became one of the most expensive and most copied buildings in the young United States. It is estimated that more than 300 prisons worldwide are based on the Penitentiary's wagon-wheel, or "radial" floor plan.

Some of America's most notorious criminals were held in the Penitentiary's vaulted, sky-lit cells, including bank robber Willie Sutton and Al Capone. After 142 years of consecutive use, Eastern State Penitentiary was completely abandoned in 1971, and now stands, a lost world of crumbling cellblocks and empty guard towers.

From a technology perspective, the building was a marvel for its time.  By "confinement in solitude with labor", every prisoner was completely isolated within its own cell, with eighteen-inch thick walls providing near total silence.  To complement this, architect John Haviland created an entire infrastructure of indoor plumbing, running water, and central heat that was virtually unrivaled even in the home of wealthy Americans.  Amazingly, not even the first warden had running water in his living space.  The thought of having this in a huge building in the early 19th century is akin to driving a car when most people had horse and buggies.

 The "radial" floor plan mentioned in the summary (also known as "wagon wheel") refers to the prison being designed with a center point with prison hallways extended from it.  One guard could monitor all corridors by standing in this middle point and spinning around (as I did when I visited). Below this hub lied the gravity-fed plumbing system and supported the central heating system.  Remember, this is 1820!

I hope you like the photo above. The rest are in my Google+ / Picassa album and can be accessed by clicking the photo or clicking here.

For additional information, please see the following sites

 - Eastern State Penitentiary Website

 - VisitPhilly's Eastern State Penitenitary Site

 - New York Times Special: Voices from Eastern State Penitentiary

Tech in Education: Keeping Us Ahead of the Curve

Nowadays, it's very easy to satisfy the desire to learn something by logging in to the Internet. While there are a number of paid services, free is the word of the day! Whether you are currently in school or simply interested in a topic, you have your choice from several sources. Here are three of my favorites.

MIT OpenCourseWare
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a large number of courses online for free. A class can include a combination of lecture notes, exams, labs, background reading, and even video. Many of the popular classes are the typical MIT topics such as engineering and computer science, but there are also liberal arts classes available as well as classes from its Sloan business school.

Khan Academy
Khan offers a variety of videos each dedicated to a single educational topic. I've personally found it to be an excellent way to reinforce concepts for children. I tutor students in Algebra, and its a great resource to ensure that I am up to speed on alternate ways to attack a concept. Additionally, it's a great resource for my students to browse between our tutoring sessions. Think of it as YouTube for education. Wired recently had a great story on this resource.

Online Tutoring
If a traditional one on one role is needed, there are several websites that connect people with tutors via text or video chat. They often offer an online whiteboard to be able to work out specific problems with students. Communication is through text chat, with the option for voice chat. These services cover various classes, from science to English to history. The example given, Tutor.com, provides free access in several participating libraries in the US.

Any other cool sites?

Google+ and Twitter: A Month In

Every time I leave Google+ and duck back into the Twitterverse, I get frustrated at a few things:

1) Lack of stickiness. It is way too easy to miss posts. I have a bunch of Twitter lists that help, but I still end up doing a lot of scrolling. Messages that can fit in what G+ message are only broken up into dozens of tweets, filling my stream. This also has the opposite effect - if I tweet, I usually get all of the responses that I'm going to get within an hour or so. My G+ posts get responses, likes, and shares days after I post them.

2) Spammers. I'm sure G+ will get its fair share of spammers and bots, but I haven't seen any yet. I hate when i get an @ reply based on one of my posts matching some random bot algorithm.

3) Lack of visualization. Twitter's stream of text is beginning to look boring. I really, really love how visual G+ is, with pics and videos (yes, and animated Gifs) right in the browser.

These are issues that I learned to deal with before Google+, mainly because Twitter is so much better than alternatives like Facebook when it comes to having a conversation. But now, they stick out like a sore thumb.