A lot of people think that technology is holding back wireless communication, but it's not. It's compelling uses that are holding back wireless. Nobody knows what it's good for because they haven't had an opportunity to experiment. And so what we're about is experimenting with new types of communication. |
For a long time people have thought of information as being a destination. You had to go to a book, you had to go to a library, you had to go to a shaman. ... But now, with new mobile technology and wireless technologies, information is turning into a companion. |
If you look at a young person and ask them a question, there was a time when they would have stood up to find that information in a computer or somewhere else. But ask a 17-year-old a question now and you're going to find them reaching into their pocket, because that's something that they expect to gain access to whenever and wherever they are. |
The real ultra-cool part of what we're doing down here is we're trying to change the relationship that people have with information. What we expect more than anything else is for creative ideas to come out of it. |
We've got the very beginning stages of a lot of things. These aren't mature technologies. But some of the student projects are ones that we really expect to grow and become important resources for Athens. And really the most exciting thing is the businesses, the government, the students consider this to be a community resource and they're excited about it. |