Lollapalooza Days

This might seem off topic. However, I would like to comment on my experience at Lollapalooza.

I had the great opportunity to go to Lollapalooza last weekend. The festival was located in Grant Park at Downtown Chicago. I long list of bands played during three days of a good (sometimes, not so good) rhythm mixture.

Lollapalooza was probably the biggest music festival that I have been so far. I would say that the second in size was the Rock In Rio III (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). The infrastructure of Lollapalooza was perfect, my only complaint was the fact that they were not selling beer, only Budweiser. :-) The concerts were perfectly scheduled and I really enjoyed the whole environment around Grant Park and Downtown.

Last Monday, a friend sent an article from MIT Technology Review about Technology @ Lollapalooza. This is just one more example that networked technology is part of our daily lives.

Despite the fact that the technology device that I took more advantage was a portable fan with an attached water mister during the very very hot weather on Friday, it was interesting to see the high-tech tends packed.

I was wondering later that one could enjoy this huge live crowd to perform a kind of field experiment with sensor devices attached to people. Perhaps, some of the collected data in this "live experiment" could be useful for future simulation based studies.

The Backup Power

The fact that backup is an important part of any IT infrastructure management plan, everybody should know. What about backing up DNAs?

Well, this is what a NYTimes article by By Richard Morgan ("Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond This Terra Firma") suggests (in a scientific fiction mode) that it could be done to prevent human life of being extinct by natural or war disasters.

Despite the currently unrealistic, yet possible, interesting description of the applicability of a DNA repository of every form of life in our beloved planet earth, the article discuss how the doomsday is understated sometimes.

However, instead of putting all effort on developing technologies for "DNA backup" and storage, how about to move the focus from military development to sustainable development? I guess this would be a very good and true step to reduce the risk of human extinction.

Anyway, reading this article was good to reassure my point of view that some priorities of some nations do not seem to me the right way to go. :-)

Cheers,
./Eli