I’ll be honest, I assumed this Rose Cafe would be about assisted suicide based on the title. So I was very surprised when Jeff Prince started talking about cutting cable and switching to other forms of media. Probably the most interesting thing that I learned from this talk was the difference between latency and bandwidth, and when each would be most important. Professor Blalock provided the best analogy–he said you should imagine them as a highway, where bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway and latency is the length of the highway. So at a certain point, high bandwidth loses its relevance because there are already enough lanes, but latency can always be reduced. I would have to agree with Professor Prince that latency is the future, and that putting your money into smaller latency would result in faster internet than higher bandwidth. I also really enjoyed Prince’s discussion of his research, because he discussed selection biases as well as difficulties with surveys. It was a reminder to always question the statistics you see day to day, because almost all data can be skewed due to some sort of bias or inaccuracy inherent in the experiment. Honestly, I didn’t think I would enjoy a talk that was so tech-y, but I was fascinated by the subject. Cornell really pushes you to specialize early and stop exploring new subjects, but this was a good reminder to keep trying to push the boundaries of what you already know interests you–because you never know what might pull you in!