TheBanyanTree: RE:: The Access Grid Banana

[Jingles Street Robinson]

Food ...
 
I found this fascinating, Mike !! I always am
interested in the subject of Food and the psychology thereof. How could
these bright
participants be unaware that others are watching them eat?? I would be
inclined to ask some of those what they are having and how it is. Seems
rather natural to me. :)
 
Fondly ...
 
   Jingles in San Antonio ...

 
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From: Mike Pingleton
Date: Saturday, August 16, 2003 22:27:07
..
Subject: TheBanyanTree: The Access Grid Banana
 
I used to run a department here at this major midwestern university but then
I got a promotion of sorts. Now I'm a project manager and I spend most of my
time dealing with other project managers at various seats of learning across
the United States. We've got this really big computational project spanning
five institutions and it's a never ending headache and
most days I wish I was still running my little department.

Every Thursday we meet, us project managers, via video-teleconferencing.
Every site has a room with video cameras and microphones and some fancy tech
that allows us to hook it all together over an ultra-high-speed network.
These video-teleconference rooms are called Access Grid Nodes.
Each site sends two or three camera images to all the other sites, so the
projection wall in our node room is filled with little rectangles full of
people from miles away. And we're on a wall in their room too.

The meeting is at noon my time, so some people are eating lunch while we
meet. It's only ten AM out on the west coast, so those folks usually aren't
eating, the same with the Pittsburgh node. But there's a guy eating wok-food
out of a styrofoam to-go box, and another shoveling in something from a
plastic container. Looks like leftovers.

I don't eat during these video-teleconferences because it feels weird. You
can watch people eat and they don't know it. If we were all in the same room
 it would be terribly bad manners to stare at someone while they are wolfing
down a bacon cheeseburger. Here in the Access Grid Node, nobody can tell you
are watching them eat.

I watch people eat during the meeting. I can't help it. I don't have some
weird fetish, I simply can't get over the fact that a woman thousands of
miles away from me in San Diego is peeling a banana. In real time. Right now
 How does she eat bananas? Will she take a bite and hold the rest, or put it
down on the table? (Down it goes as she reaches for her laptop). The Access
Grid Banana is a concept I just can't get used to. It's like having your
neighbors peering through your dining room window at
suppertime, and you know they are there. And it's supposed to be okay with
all parties involved.

Perhaps this is a perfectly acceptable and terribly mundane social
activity, and I'm making too much of a little thing. I should just ignore
the people who are eating and pay attention to the project management task
at hand. It won't be easy - I'm still wondering what that Chicago guy was
eating from an aluminum cake pan. It didn't look like cake.













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TheBanyanTree 
http://remsset.com/thebanyantree 


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