There are several responses to this. One is to shun the new at all costs: As long as there are people trying to make a buck off the Net, some might argue, it's not a valid subject for study. As soon as one student comes to TECH solely to make money, the hands of all the streaming-media researchers will be dirty.
A proper counter-argument recognizes that the new is precisely the place where careful study can make the most difference. If knowledge is power, then wider dissemination of knowledge is the only counter to misuse. We need ways to understand and parse newness, not to condemn it out of hand.
TECH as I see it would be a center where students can explore technology, see what they think of it, figure out how it works and how it can fit into their own areas of study. Perhaps a great new SGML lexicon will come out of it, but equally likely may be holographic psychology studies or smart fabrics. The academic and applied study of computer science have something to learn from each other.
It will not be easy to strike this balance. Wherever experimentation and change is allowed, motives come into question. It may be difficult to tell exactly whether someone is interested in ideas for their own sake or for their eventual monetary worth or for the challenge of winning. Be they political, economic, social or religious, the frontier always contains ulterior motives. This is not, to me, a convincing damnation.
The answer, instead, is education. As we come of age in a world where technology is alternately billed as a whole-scale digital revolution and capitalism masquerading as innovation, a critical part of education is learning what technology can do and, more importantly, what it cannot do.
Put simply, technology--like democracy, language or gears--is a tool. We must understand how our tools work and whom they work for; this requires a great deal of time and the space for experimentation. A TECH center at Harvard, done properly, could give fascinating answers to these questions.
Maryanthe E. Malliaris '01 is a mathematics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.