When Daria and Elena had first arrived at Connected College they had each been given one of the small handheld devices similar to smartphones, but with different abilities. They had become known as Ests and were made by the Green Family Corporation in Vancouver, http://www.GreenFamilyCorporation.com/. The devices had come a long way since first being introduced five years earlier and would now run apps intended for other devices, but were quite different in other respects. They included a neural network on a chip and data mining software to make use of it. They were truly an interface to the school or college.
Drake Phillips had been adamant that his students all use the devices, which meant that the college would have to use a version of the software used at Social Tech High. Drake had planned to do that anyway, and his wife didn’t object. But that was the software. She didn’t like sharing the hardware.
Sally Aston was principal of Social Tech High and had opposed the creation of the college for several years, not wanting her students to choose it instead of a good university. Now she tolerated the college and even approved of Drake’s desire to use the school software, which meshed nicely with all the other social tech software being used by the Tech Fantasies organization these days. It was her husband’s planned use of the Ests that she didn’t like.
Not just handheld computers and communications devices for individuals, these Ests had been in some ways the eyes and ears of the school. Now they would be the eyes and ears of the college, too. That would tie school and college together in ways Sally hadn’t wanted.
Though developed by Beth Green, the Ests had not been in use at Green University, which was not organized along compatibility lines, like the school and college. Daria had never seen one before. Like many other students, she sat and discussed them in the first three sessions of a class which was held weekly from the first week at the college.
Daria Sinshah and her lover, Nisanir Ebanti, were in class together when the Est was explained to them.
“You don’t need this class”, Dr. Tanner said. “The devices have a built in help system which will enable you to make full use of them. But an overview may be useful. ‘Est’ is a pronunciation of the letters ‘S’ and ‘T’, ‘ST’, short for Social Technology. They came into use because the Ests were first developed for use in the Social Tech High school. The school has about 4200 students using them, and when the college is filled up, we will have about 800, so altogether about 5000 students here in New York will have one. Counting faculty and staff members, almost 6000 people here will use them. There are many others in the city and in other places which have some of them, too. People tied in to the school and college, mostly. They are for use by people who are tied together by compatibility and interact with one of these two institutions.”
Daria asked dryly, “And why? What makes them different from the ordinary phones other people carry around with them? The college label on the front?”
“They don’t have to be different. You can turn off all of the extra functionality. You can pick just some of it to turn off, turn some of it of at predictable times, or in special occasions.”
“Turn what off, dammit?” Daria had spent too much time making love with Nisanir and not enough time sleeping, so she was tired and a bit grouchy.
“Well, it notices where you are and who you talk too, pictures you take, queries you make, apps you use, what you do with them. In other words, it is very nosey. But it doesn’t communicate any of this to the school or college software. It is nosey, a snoop, but not a tattletale. Instead it keeps an internal profile of you, entirely on your own device, for you to use, yourself. There are various way you can use it. One basic way is to feed it to the built in neural network which can digest and learn from it. Another basic way is to maintain a private dialogue with a friend or the institution’s system.”
“I do not understand what you mean by private dialogue, in this context”, Nisanir said.
“The machine can send out information you want it to send out, ask for information you want to receive, all without your direct attention. For example, you can tell it to send a friend’s machine information about where you are and request notification if you are near enough for a face-to-face meeting. You can tell it to do that for all of your Level 5 and above friends, or anyone compatible with your at that level, or at some slightly lower level.”
Another student in the class asked, “Can information be passed directly, from your device to your friend’s, without the college system receiving it?”
“Yes. That is essential. Cryptography is used for privacy and security.”
“How can we be sure that works?”
“Some of our major donors have contracts with security firms which check out our systems by trying to break into them. Some students and parents with money have done the same thing.”
There was more discussion in this class, then the same one met a week later to review their experiences with the devices. The same class would continue to meet once a week, but would focus less on the devices and more on the rest of the college experience.
Most of the students decided to use the default settings when using their Ests. For example, GPS tracking was turned on, and so was reception of building status information, so that when a couple in a sexual relationship was in their own room, in the evening or at night, with the lights out, then phone ringing or vibrating would be turned off. It was easy to override that, but unless specifically requested to, the devices would not interrupt lovers when they were seeking privacy.
All the faculty and students and both Social Tech High and Connected College had the devices, which tended to draw high school and college together in ways which Sally Aston didn’t like. Too many college students were already connected to younger people still at the school. Now these connections would continue to get stronger, dragging her students towards the college, which would start to seem a desirable alternative to the real university Sally so badly wanted them to attend.
How serious would this problem be? Neither Drake nor Sally could answer that question, but it was much discussed at the dinner table. Sally would not be at all comfortable with its use until she saw how many Social Tech High graduates chose the college over a local university instead.
Connected College changed a lot over its first year. In part this was due to the input of the new vice-president Dan Burchell. He was an exceptionally valuable person because he had good qualifications for the job and was very compatible with college president Drake Phillips.
Had there been no such person available, Drake might have had to find one person to be his vice-president and another to be his friend.
It was pure good luck that a man meeting both conditions had been found. There had not been a large enough pool candidates to guarantee finding one. Barely considered at all was Dan’s marital status. Had he been married or otherwise committed to someone insufficiently compatible, that relationship would have been ignored and another male friend sought for him. That would have been to ensure that he was connected into the college by at least two links.
Though not at all celibate, Dan had no strong relationship to get in the way and had arrived in New York without sexual entanglements. Once he was settled in and had become comfortable with his role as Drake’s friend, the two discussed this issue.
“I do know a few people in the city, Drake, even a few women, but none of them are for me. Being an unattached man in New York might be fun, but hardly suits my position. Ideally I should be connected to someone else in the college.”
“Well, you could just go for the best person, ignoring the college. You’d likely find someone more compatible without the additional constraint. But yes, if she is part of the college, that’s better. You could aim for both. Find the best person you can, and we’ll see if there is some way to hire her. Try searching without constraints, first.”
“I agree. Let’s just see who pops up. Let’s suppose I put no constraints on at all, not even location.”
Dan did just that. The list of suggestions included people from various professions and three different countries. “These are of nearly equal quality, Drake. Should I go for a faculty member?”
“Only if you want to. Don’t worry about it.”
“But you are a believer, Drake. If it was up to you, wouldn’t you want someone in the college?”
“Of course.”
“Who do you have in administration? I’m supposedly compatible with this woman here, who manages a large office in Brooklyn. Very artistic, vital, humorous, and so on. Could be my type.”
“Oh, you mean non-teaching staff. Someone you might work closely with, in fact. No, our administrative staff is not well organized at all. We have been getting them the same way we get faculty and students, since we want them tied into the college with tight links. It’s hard to find people that way. If adding you to the mix had the accidental advantage of bringing us someone suitable, I’d consider it lucky.”
“I’ll try getting in contact with her.”
Sue Ann Blair was from the south, and always went by Sue Ann, not just Sue. She was artistic and musical, but liked to organize things and loved managing an office. An unusual combination.
Drake would keep looking for staff while Dan got to know Sue Ann. When their relationship became intimate and was likely to become permanent, Drake offered her a job.
“We are not going to have the kind of hierarchical organization you might expect, Ms. Blair, as I am sure Dan’s told you. A core person will probably emerge, but he or she will not necessarily be any kind of boss.”
“I’m not sure that’s workable.”
“We’ll see. Your connection with Dan will probably mean you will work with him a lot. That will give you a key role, but it will mean spending time with Dan in the workplace, Miss Blair. If you break up, it might be difficult for you.”
“Oh, call me Sue Ann, silly. Dan and I aren’t going to break up. I’ll never let him get away from me.”
“Dan says he has no intention of letting you go, either.”
“Well, he hasn’t tried to marry me, either, has he?”
“Shall I give him a shove in the ribs for you?”
“Don’t you worry about it. I’ve got the situation under control. Besides, he is Canadian. Don’t all you Canadians try to do the right thing?”
“I suppose. That’s what got me Sally. Best thing I ever did.”
“Then it’s a done deal, I’m sure of it. So if you want me to take the job, I’ll do it. Other than having to work with Dan, are there any other strings attached?”
“Well, yes, that is what we do, we string together people. It would be good if you could get a woman friend in the college. If you have a really close best friend we might get her into the college, somehow, or we could get you another one.”
“How arrogant you are, Drake Phillips. To manipulate people this way. I do have a best friend, would she do?”
“Two questions. Might she fit into the college? And do you suppose I could ask you to run you two through the software? To see how compatible you are.”
“Maybe.”
No, it turned out that Sue Ann’s existing best friend was not the right person.
“Nothing is going to change the way Sela and I get along, but I’d be willing to take on another friend as well. If I have to.”
Dan asked her to try, and Sue Ann was receptive to him in many ways. Yes, she’d try to find someone. Drake and Dan both offered her help, but none was needed.
Sue Ann found a new friend who had just received her doctorate and was looking for work. She would be willing to teach at the college, though she’d never heard of it. Again there would be connectivity issues, but everyone could live with them for now.
There would be no end to this process of building the college as a collection of chains and trees because people would graduate and some of those would leave, but for a couple months at the end of this first year the college was fully connected up, staff included. When that day arrived, Dan and Sue Ann celebrated the occasion by going to an expensive restaurant for an unusually fine dinner. There he proposed marriage to her.
“Well. It’s about time. You’re a good man, Dan Burchell. I never doubted that you’d come through eventually.”
She also said yes, then took pleasure organizing a wedding for the last week in June, just after the college handed out its first set of diplomas.
Though he was happy at this development, the prospect of losing both his vice-president and such and important administrator when they went on their honeymoon did not thrill a panicky Drake Phillips.
Connected College had as yet no accreditation and there was no guarantee that courses offered by the college would be acceptable to other institutions. So the student body had been made up from believers, people willing take a risk. Usually they were willing to take that risk because of the good reputation of Social Tech High and because of the promises Drake had made to them.
His senior class, all transfers from other colleges, had been promised a chance to stay on, becoming juniors in a four-year college. After only one year of operation as a two-year college it would become a four-year one. A lot of new connections would have to be made. This meant filling the school to the brim as soon as possible. A new freshman class would arrive, and he would also have to accept transfers to fill up the 800 available spaces at about 200 students a year. In theory the software would do most of the work, but in practice a lot of human intervention was required.
Drake got help from Daria and other students with useful talents. He pressed faculty members into helping more than their contracts required. That was easy. Almost all the faculty and staff agreed to help. They would work hard over the summer, some not taking their vacation time.
The college that opened in the fall was not just a bigger one, it was also going to run differently. As well as the usual classes in which a member of the faculty interacted with eight students, there would be some lectures. On the continental model, lectures would not be attached to any specific course, but would be on the lecturers own research interests. To discuss these lectures, small classes would be made available, run by students in the upper levels.
Having students sharing some of the burden of teaching had been tried in may places, with some success. Here at Connected College it would be different. Two or sometimes three students from a higher year would run tutorials and seminars for the lower level students. These teaching assistants would not handle classes by themselves because the college wanted good coverage of the material and felt that a well matched, low error-covariance team would be better than any individual student teacher.
The new four year college would again be filled mostly with believers, willing to take a risk that their courses might not be acceptable other places. Indeed, there would be a senior class, a fourth year college class which would expect bachelor’s degrees the following June. They would be taking a big risk, because those degrees might very well be unacceptable elsewhere.
However, Drake promised them that he would not only provide them an excellent education but arrange for grad school for those who wanted to carry on. To be sure he could make this guarantee, Drake Phillips took his vice-president, Dan Burchell, and had a long talk with Peter Henderson, the young and vigorous president of NYU.
“Let’s be frank, Dr. Henderson. We want your help in setting up what we hope will someday be a competing university.”
“Social Tech University, perhaps? I hear rumours that your wife would never hear of such a thing, Dr. Phillips.”
“Ouch. Yes. She doesn’t want her students to have any excuse not to go to an better university. Trusting, isn’t she?”
“From what I hear, she actively discourages her students from going to your college. What would happen if there was a Social Tech University?”
“Well, that’s the thing. We imagine something so good that it could compete head-on with NYU, while being so small that it wouldn’t threaten your school.”
“OK. So what do you want from me?”
“We want to be able to put together a graduate institute, which would do most of the work towards the education of grad students, who would also be enrolled as NYU grad students. Then once thoroughly examined by your faculty, they’d get their degrees from NYU.”
“What do you mean by ‘most of the work’?”
“Well, we have a good faculty, who could give graduate level courses. We’d like you to give further examinations to the students who take those courses, then accept them as if they were your own. Then our faculty would supervise masters theses and doctoral dissertations. You would give comprehensives, oral exams, and participate fully when theses and dissertations are defended. So you could with good conscience give out your degrees to our students. The only real difference would be that our faculty would handle most of the teaching and supervision.”
“And in return for this?”
“We’ll pay you, a lot, and we’ll let you use our faculty members when and if you want them.”
“Well, we might be able to work something out. It wouldn’t be cheap. We might have to hire additional faculty to handle the work.”
“We’ll cover that. We have major donors prepared to pay you well for your services.”
“Alright. Let’s say that I agree in principle, but we will have to work out the details. Will you be making this offer to any other university?”
“Maybe. We’ve thought about. What would be your preference? Would you rather be the only participant.”
“I think so, yes. If you are going to pay somebody to hire new faculty members, who might be useful to us besides what they do for you, then I’d rather we got them.”
“So, subject to detailed negotiations, you’ll go for it?”
“Subject to negotiation. Yes.”
They talked around the issue for a while, but the general conclusion was that a Connected College graduate institute could work with New York University faculty members, so that people wanting the highly linked environment of the college could still get good advanced degrees.
This agreement formed the basis of the promise Drake made to his newly recruited junior and senior classes. Someone entering the college as a freshman could do all of his or her undergraduate and graduate education in the highly desirable social and educational environment of the college.
The first year of the new four year college passed quickly. By the time it ended, a new building for the graduate institute had been obtained. The graduation ceremony in June was the college’s second. They handed out both two year diplomas and now for the first time bachelors degrees. Drake hoped they would have some value.
Whether or not the degrees would be accepted at face value, Drake was happy with the education his students had received. They did very well on standardized tests like the graduate school admission test, the law school admission test and the medical school admission test. He didn’t know how many students would actually get advanced education, but many had taken the tests and they had done well. A good sign.
Drake and Sally continued dinner table discussions of what was going on at the school and college. Often joining in these discussions was Sally’s daughter, Kelly Phillips. Kelly had been nine the year the college began and ten at its first graduation, when a panicky Drake had turned the college into a four year institution. She had turned eleven the this June, when the first bachelors degrees were handed out.
Over the summer Kelly worked hard with a large corps of volunteers from Tech Fantasies and Social Tech High who were helping to furnish the recently converted building which would house the Graduate Institute building. Kelly could hardly avoid noticing just how stressed her father was that summer.
“Is it so very hard, Daddy?”
“Hardest thing I have ever had to do. I need to find at least a few students at all levels, and tie them into the college, somehow.”
“Why, Daddy?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you, Kelly. It is a bit of a secret.”
“Oh, Daddy. Please?”
“Well, I don’t want your mother to know. I am hoping for full accreditation soon. Then it will not be long before we can become a university. Your mother hates that idea. She doesn’t want there to be a university, ever.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you see, I want it to be Social Tech University. She thinks the name alone would tempt students from the high school to make the lazy choice of going to the university, which she’s sure will not be good enough. She wants her students to go to the very best universities.”
“It’s simple, Daddy. Just make sure your Social Tech University is one of the very best. Easy.”
“Oh, yes. Easy. Well, I’ll try.”