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convocation observations

I was participating in the UChicago convocation as Student Marshal making sure everyone actually received their diplomas in a timely fashion. In one sense, Student Marshal is supposedly the "highest honor" the College offers to its students. How do students get chosen? I honestly have no idea.

Regardless, while I was marching down the aisle of Rockefeller Chapel, I decided to observe what students and families are using in terms of technology. I still remember my dad's graduation at UIC when I was little. People had these gigantic 35mm cameras and were trying to be as discrete as possible to sneak a picture with flash of their loved ones. Although, fall convocation is a historically smaller ceremony (only 200 people chose to graduate this quarter), it was interesting to notice how everyone had digital video cameras and slim digital cameras. Lights were flashing everywhere, but instead of a big black lens blocking my view there was a tiny silver camera shuttering away in front of my eyes. I also noticed a wide variety of people using their cell phones to take photos of their friends and families to put them up as wallpaper. Although the school's convocation ceremony did not allow flash photography, this did not stop some graduating students from using their mobile phones to sneak a couple of pictures of the ceremony and their friends during the ceremony.

This got me wondering. Nonetheless, I have many friends who don't believe mobile phones should serve as a jack-of-all-trades media center. They just want a small phone that allows them to communicated with the outside world. Meanwhile, I see plenty of other students using their 3.0 megapixel camera on their mobile phones to take pictures and send to their friends. Digital cameras were few and far between when I was in high school. (I still remember my 2.0 megapixel Canon S100... yes S100.) Now, they are so ubiquitous that many photo-sharing sites are exploding as more people own digital cameras and want to share these photos with friends, family, and sometimes the world.

It's pretty exciting as America is slowly embracing high-speed data networks and expensive yet fully-equipped mobile phones. Although this country is still far behind my home country Korea and the rest of East Asia, it's still a fascinating time to examine for the future. It's interesting when you have many of the giant tech companies such as Google and Yahoo! headquartered in America, but why is America always behind on the latest in consumer electronics and gadgetry! This has always frustrated me for much of my life. At least now America has finally come to its senses and realized that maybe having high-end gadgets is cool.

posted by Koh @ 8:25 PM