Universities are supposed to be the paragon of progress, and in many respects all of the underlying social, political, economic, and theoretical progress is made possible by technology and electronic communication services.  The “invisible college” used to mean the network of scholars that corresponded through mail and informal (non-institutional) connections, but increasingly the invisible college uses electronic means to stay connected.  Whether the communication occurs through a VoIP call across the Atlantic to European colleagues, blog entries to the larger academic world, or emails across town or country, it is impossible to deny the impact of this communication.  Not only does this new digital invisible college promote interdisciplinary research, it enables sharing of often scarce or difficult to find resources, and connects impoverished regions with the academic elite, possibly even enabling a form of technological leapfrogging.

The University of Western Ontario is a major Canadian university located in south-west Ontario.  It houses some of the top scholars in North America, is competitive for federal grants and scholarships, and outshines it’s Toronto-based rivals (University of Toronto, York University) in many departments.  Given the large student population and cutting-edge research, one would expect that the University of Western Ontario would lead the charge to furnish electronic communication.  The University of Western Ontario has extra incentive to do so, since it is remote from Toronto, Canada’s economic and political powerhouse.  The expectation would be that remaining relevant in such a distant (and economically depressed) city would necessitate communication unrivalled by it’s Toronto counterparts.  As it turns out, the University of Western Ontario fails miserably in this respect.

The campus is wildly Microsoft-centric, and rarely supports other operating systems or applications from “fringe” developers.  The one foray into non-Microsoft equipment is a small installation of Sun thin-clients in the library.  Of course, Sun is a great enterprise company, and makes some excellent first-rate equipment, however, the library’s thin clients predominately collect dust due to the confusing, foreign, and outdated Solaris operating system—-students are simply unable to operate the computers.  Even if the Sun thin-clients go unused, the expectation might be that students tend to carry laptops, and since the campus is ostensibly wireless, this may be a non-issue.  The BlueSocket wireless vendor that the University has purchased is buggy, especially on non-Microsoft laptops.  Since Apple laptops now command a 20% market share of North American laptops (and this number is probably closer to 50% in the educational sector), it is grievous to think that the University would purchase a system from a vendor that barely supports non-Microsoft products.  Even on Microsoft products the wireless access is deplorable, it is slow, frequently drops connection, and is available on in “select” areas.  What is the impact of this sort of regressive information communication technology given the need for a vibrant invisible college.

By the way, I am writing this offline, because today, the wireless is not buggy, it is non-existent.