Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Of Joy (and how America makes it happen)

Was talking with friends while at lunch. And this being summer in California, the week before school starts for kids. The topics were obvious. Disneyland. flying small airplanes - basically having fun.

Interesting thing, I am sure many of you have been to Anaheim too. Ever wonder how Disneyland remains so clean? You throw your trash, and millions of others do the same. No one collects the trash, but the place is always clean. Not one trash-can overflowing with garbage. Wonder why? Well, I know now. There is a world underneath the fantasyland you walk on. There is an underground cleaning force. Any garbage you throw, gets sucked in and cleaned immediately.

And that is nothing. If you are an engineer, here is more. They have audio over ethernet... no you heard that right. Not boring old VoIP. but over ethernet. And amazingly, they have virtual networks for each type of audio broadcast (ok, multicast for the nit-pickers). One for the music, one for announcements and one for emergency messages etc. Amazing isn't it. How complicated it is to make - Joy.

This is just crazy. But this got me thinking. Is it just Disneyland? Isn't all our 'privileged lives' the same, with some underground force, that is working to keep us comfortable? Am I not just another kid in Disneyland. I just don't appreciate all the effort that goes into the comforts I enjoy. Until the forces get angry and shake my life up?

1 comment:

Rajesh said...

Wow! Great analogy. Never knew there was an underground crew at Disney.