Ahh, the winter Olympics. Every 4 years we get to sit by out televisions and watch the very best athletes take part in sports that involve frozen water and snow. If you live in Illinois, you know very well how difficult those sports can be. But have you ever thought about the technology that is a part of the Olympic Games? It has grown tremendously over the years and it has had a tremendous impact on the Olympics. Some of the new, awesome technology includes something called a supercomputer and weather control. Io9.com says that in the previous summer Olympics 2 years ago, the 10 most powerful computers were purchased from IBM to help predict the weather. I can really see how this can be helpful for the games, especially the winter games for the simple fact that most of the sports need cold conditions. I couldn't believe that in the Beijing Summer Olympics, they actually would fire cloud seeding material into rain clouds before they could cause problems for the athletes. Controlling the weather...Seriously!
Now, we could watch the games on NBC and NBC sponsored channels, but NBC wants to give the viewers every opportunity to view their favorite sport. NBC will broadcast live as well as taped games. They will also put the games On-Demand and if that isn't enough, someone taped it and you can go to YouTube to watch what you missed. The Olympics can very easily take over your life for a couple of weeks. With every event, there are people who want to ruin it. (Unfortunately) The Olympics has stepped up their security and have added facial recognition software, equipment that identifies radioactive isotopes.
With these 2010 Olympics, the technology is great. In British Columbia, they have 800 Servers, 6,000 Computers, 4,000 Printers, Result system terminals that include CIS terminals and Intranet terminals with over 100,000 hours of testing. Wow, that is a lot of technology that is needed for the games! I wonder what happens to the computers after the games are over. Do they donate them? Every 2 years, it seems as if the technology in the Olympics is becoming more advanced but with that being said, it also seems as if the Olympics are moving away from just simply watching athletes at their best. What will the Olympics come up with next?
What will the Olympics come up with next?
The tech used with the Olympics is certainly impressive. Can you relate all this to education? :-)
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