Good News Story- The 'Big Apple' goes Green!

New York City may have hosted no St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Irish celebratory festivities this month but in 2020 it is more green than ever before.

Two weeks ago I came back from one of my favourite places on Earth. As a UCG student many decades ago, I took advantage of the J1-Visa programme to undertake summer work in the apartments and hotels (the world famous Plaza!) of Manhattan. Staying at Columbia University, eating in the nearby Tom's Diner and living there in the halcyon days of disco (Donna Summer, Bee Gees, Gloria Gaynor, Village People, Anita Ward…), I remember every glorious mad moment as if it was yesterday. I have loved the affectionately known Big Apple ever since.

Two years ago Cepta, my sons and myself decided that we would save hard to be able to take a family trip there each year for as long as possible. It was an opportunity as well to meet up with my American cousins- Good to finally meet you Ed Eccles ‘in the flesh’!

What impresses me so much in the last few years about New York is that, even though it has been synonymous for over a hundred years as the ultimate city of skyscrapers, concrete, tarmac, consumerism and high energy consumption, it is now brilliantly reinventing itself as a Green and sustainable city. It was of course always famous for its fantastic public transport subway system and the great Central Park. But it is in the last few years becoming populated with neighbourhood gardens, rooftop gardens, urban apiaries, cyclists/pedestrians Greenways, organic food outlets, urban farmer markets, outdoor street cafes along a once traffic-congested Broadway, environmental science research centres, natural heritage learning museums, public parks teeming with wildlife and wonderful community/schools/business initiatives to clean up the once heavily polluted New York Bay and Hudson River.

Though a lot more needs to be done to make it a truly eco-friendly environment, nevertheless the Big Apple is moving in the right direction.

Over the next few weeks, I will post every few days a different thematic story on the Big (Green) Apple and provide details of our very own partnership initiative to make Galway a National Park City (coming soon!). As this time of crisis, we need some good news stories!

Bridging society's 'Technology Divide'

Photograph shows a group of parents from the Mercy College in Galway City who completed one of my DERI Internet courses that included an introduction to online social networks such as Bebo & MySpace.
The fast pace of technology change in the last few decades has led to individuals and even whole sections of society being alienated and feeling disenfranchised.
It happened on a continental scale with the collapse of the communist system in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the early 1990s. Older men in these countries, who previously had jobs for life in the huge heavy industrial complexes such as shipbuilding, suddenly found their places of work closed down as the economies went into meltdown. Their skills were no longer needed and they did not possess the knowledge, the opportunities and sometimes the inclination to learn the modern high tech skills required in the post-communist era. Interestingly women tended to be more flexible and anyway were often more in demand for the low-paying jobs in the production assembly factories that were then opening across Eastern Europe.
However Western Europe countries also experienced a technological divide as an older generation of people were oftentimes out-of touch with the latest Internet-based communcation gadgets and systems that were quickly became so much part of the everydaay lives of teenagers and children.
So part of my remit as Outreach Officer at the Digital Enterprise Research Insitute (DERI) based at Galway University is to organise community Internet programmes aimed at bridging this technology divide. DERI now has a wide range of courses aimed at different audiences including active retirement groups, residents associations, disability organisations, neighbourhoods and parents. These are often groups whose members can feel swamped and threatened by the pace of change. My job is to help give them a working 'hands-on' awareness of the latest technological devices and encourage them to grasp the opportunities presented by the new tools and services available.
DERI is the Worlds largest institute involved in developing the next stage of the World Wide Web known as the Semantic Web. We have researchers from 15 different countries. And it is based in Galway, a city that has rich industrial, educational, social, political and cultural vibrancy.
But in spite of its high-level research 'raison d'etre', it is mandated as a recipient of government funding to have a community and educational outreach programme aimed at the general public in its locality. This is my very rewarding job to manage and to tutor, a duty that I enjoy immensely!