Several other N.C . State students and myself traveled to Blacksburg to attend the ACC Meeting of the Minds at Virginia Tech. Believe me, I am aware of how pretentious the title sounds.
ACC MOM, in its seventh year, brings students across disciplines from each ACC school together to share their research and experiences. I was attending to present my research on the ethical frameworks governing machines. The truth is, it was like Christmas for a broke college student-I took a lot more than I gave.
Before I lose you, let me impart onto you one of the most universally applicable lessons I learned during my time in Blacksburg-beer is really, really cheap. There must be some sort of government subsidy at play; it’s cheaper than water. I’m serious, a 24 oz. bottle of water was $3.05 and a 60 oz. pitcher of Sam Adams was $6. The pricing structure constantly lit my face up with a delighted confusion most recently found when Lehigh defeated Duke.
The research I was most impressed with was the work of Harold Garner, one of the plenary speakers, in text mining. I had no idea what this was-imagery of English majors with pickaxes came to mind. However, it’s something we use every day.
Every time you use Google’s search engine, you’re text mining. Text mining is the matching of keywords against a database of information. While Googling , you may search three to five keywords at time, but the system Garner established allows for hundreds.
The impact of such a change may not be immediately apparent, but I’ll ask you to think about it for a minute. What if you could write your life story, your interests, your wants and dreams-and with a simple click of a button be matched with people like you, grants and jobs pertaining to your life and even courses you’d love to take? That’s exactly what Garner did. Explore some of his search engines, such as cratis.org and majorizer.com
For all the possibilities offered by Garner, the most powerful glimpse I had into our future was found in the time spent with the other students there. I hate platitudes more than anything, so believe me when I say this is not one: I saw our future in these students, and it’s bright.
In Blacksburg, I found originality and a motivation inside of the ACC students that incited a fire in me. One student decreased tuberculosis prevalence rates in the areas of the Philippines by 45 percent and infant mortality rates by 20 percent. Another student created a system for economic networking in an area of the Dominican Republic where they can barely provide running water. And one student was investigating new treatment protocols for diabetes. With every presentation, I was never ceased to be amazed.
The greatest part of the conference was it never ended. Sure, there was a scheduled end to each day’s events, but the conversations never died. We’d all take to the bars, especially when we discovered beer prices, and throw around ideas until close. I think we may have accomplished more in those sessions than at any other point in the day.
When it comes down to it, progress is all about interaction of ideas, the marriage of sociality and intellect. Sometimes all that is needed to bring about the future is the right combination of beer and brains.