It started with a video call. Not just any Skype call to friends or family; this call was the mother of all video calls. The intergalactic master of social media, Commander Chris Hadfield, casually teleconferenced into our beloved University of Waterloo on February 15th, and both the University and social media channels alike were abuzz with excitement. Rightfully so, as even today just the pure idea of having a real time conversation with someone in the International Space Station as it zooms around the earth is mind boggling.
In hopes of getting in on the action, my friends and I were trying to follow the conversation via Twitter and the live stream that had been set up, but we struggled to keep up with what was going on. Despite the heavy traffic directed towards the event, it wasn’t Twitter or the live stream site that was letting us down. We couldn’t even connect to the internet to begin with – everyone’s respective connections to Eduroam kept crapping out, and, needless to say, the lack of continuity somewhat hampered everyone’s experience.
That’s when I realized how ridiculous the whole situation was; the University (and arguably technology in general) has the means to set up a real time video and audio stream to someone in outer-freaking-space, but not enough attention is ever paid to assure that there is sufficient WiFi coverage to serve the 30,000 students dependent on, at least once in their academic career, campus WiFi. At first glance, that statement although true, doesn’t make a piece of sense. But the more I thought about it the more I realized, it made perfect sense. Infrastructure isn’t sexy – and as a result so many things, including our precious campus WiFi, will always suck.
Now I know what some of you are thinking, and I know that most of you thinking this have probably dedicated a good portion of your time to infrastructure based efforts. You’re thinking, “but roads and transportation and WiFi and all of these things are so important! Plus I work on them, so they have to be sexy!” Part marks. Infrastructure in its various forms is clearly essential. That concept is woven into the simple definition of infrastructure itself. What is being confused here is the divide between necessity and quality. Just because we need something as a person, group, or society to function, and just because its provided for us, doesn’t mean its going to be very good, especially if its still capable of getting the job done.
I’ll leave the sexy point up for debate between yourself and your own sub-conscious.
Allow me to illustrate, by looking at our smoggy neighbor to the East – Toronto. Toronto has always been notorious for its awful roads, and this reputation has been decades in the making. Particularly around springtime (mainly due to the typical temperature fluctuations in the area, but I digress) I would argue that you could find fewer holes in a piece of Swiss cheese than in any stretch of Toronto roads. The remainder of the Spring and Summer are usually spent by road workers haphazardly patching up these various potholes and damaged roads, and I emphasize the use of the word ‘patch’. Most of the city’s major roads are mediocrely repaired, but any residential areas usually have to cause a big stink to get any repairs done in a less-than-the-401-at-rush-hour level of traffic area. I’m pretty sure there’s still the same pothole in front of my high school that’s been there since I was a freshman, and that was before YouTube even existed. Stop laughing, I’m dead serious.
Now the solution here is obvious, right? Just pour more money into the city’s infrastructure budget and fix those roads! Let Toronto be known as the city with roads strong enough to support its people and its mayor!
Wrong! Doing that would be a total waste! Why? Because it would go completely unnoticed, and big budget items need to be flashy and attention grabbing. This is true of municipalities, governments, and universities alike.
Think about it. If you’ve ever driven somewhere where the roads are properly maintained, is the first thought to cross your mind, “Hot damn, this here is some solid pavement!” Odds are, probably not. If everyone in Toronto woke up tomorrow to the most structurally sound and uniform roads on the planet, there would be some initial surprise, followed by a witty hashtag and perhaps a new meme. However, this new hypothetical state of the art road system would never overshadow the true stars of Toronto, like the CN Tower, the CNE, the ROM, or the Leafs’ inability to make the playoffs. It would simply fade into the ether of what everyone considers to be normal, and wouldn’t be discussed again.
The same logic applies to Universities, and not just Waterloo. Would you be more compelled to go to Queens if they had ‘our WiFi is really fast and reliable!’ smeared across their posters? Would we make less fun of Laurier if their go-to bragging point was, ‘our online LEARN system never crashes’? Could you imagine someone explaining that they chose Waterloo as their university because, ‘the on campus computers were really fast and cater to all of my computing needs,’ or ‘our online job searching and matching system is so user friendly, and totally scalable’? Nope, neither can I. When faced with the decision of what to spend money on, it becomes pretty clear what types of efforts are going to win support – the groundbreaking research, the big media events, the intergalactic teleconference – because it looks better on a poster and it gets people excited, not necessarily because it benefits the masses. I’m not saying that uWaterloo, or Toronto, or any other institution for that matter doesn’t support their infrastructure at all – quite the contrary. If there was no support to begin with, these institutions wouldn’t exist. The support that’s in place just happens to be outstandingly mediocre at best.
Granted, people will always find something to complain about, because it’s one of our favorite past times. What I’ve finally come to realize though is that if that nagging issue happens to be one of infrastructure, I’m not about to hold my breath in waiting for something to change. I’m sorry friends, but I’m pretty sure campus WiFi will always suck.
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