PC World reported the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics: Charles Kao for his work in fiber optics and Willard Boyle and George Smith for their invention of the CCD. In his report, David Coursey says,

In honoring these three today, perhaps we can also honor all those who make our technology-based lives possible.

Better, we can recommit ourselves to supporting basic science and research–hard thinking–that is so out-of-fashion in much of society today.

At a time when we need more answers than ever before, we should be concerned about how many people are capable of asking the questions and putting what they discover to use for the good of everyone…

Let’s honor these scientists by supporting math and science education and, perhaps, in another 40 years we’ll be honoring a new generation of American scientists for their life-changing achievements.

Coursey has a point.

Most of us accept modern technology, whether it be the lights that appear when we flip a switch or the charge-coupled device which we might not be able to  recognize when we see it, as though it were magic of some kind. We don’t understand it, or attempt to understand it.  Even those of us who apply these marvelous discoveries may not think much about the science behind it.

It’s fine to encourage partnerships between business and education, and to look, as we at Clevertech do every day, for the ways in which we can use technology to make working life easier and more profitable. But we also have to recognize the value of pure science.

“If tachyons do exist,” a scientist in one of Sidney Harris’s great cartoons announces to a colleague, “and if they do go faster than light, then I’m determined to find something that goes faster than tachyons.”

This attitude — the determination to learn and discover whether there’s any immediate application in view or not — can’t be lost without losing also a myriad of future applications of the kind of discovery this attitude brings about.

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When we’re all in the same office all the time, it’s easy enough to collaborate. In the real world, we’re on the go, or in different time zones to begin with.

Collaboration can be synchronous, with everyone sharing a screen and chatting. It can also be a matter of giving everyone access to a file so collaboration can take place over time as each member of the team adds and adjusts. Too often, though, it ends up being a matter of multiple iterations and emails, .27 of which get lost.

Take advantage of the technologies that make remote collaboration work better.

Here are some options:

• Adobe Share (Acrobat) and ConnectNow are easy to use and have an interface familiar to Adobe users.
• GoToMeeting is another way to share screens, with voice or chat.
• Dropbox is an easy way to send files. FileReplicationPro is the powerhouse alternative.
• Google Docs can feel clunky compared to some of the others, but it’s free and everyone has access.
• SimpleGroupware is an open source option with email, CMS, and other components. There’s a mobile version now, too.

If you try out a few possibilities and they don’t fit your needs precisely, we can build something that’s exactly right for your workflow and setting.

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