A Look at How Football Has Felt Technology's Influence; A Look at Technology Time-Savers; Living Lab of Antarctica May Be in Jeopardy
ANN KELLAN, CNN ANCHOR: Huddle with the pros and discover the super technology catching attention at the Super Bowl. Learn how getting wired can give you more free time. And travel to Antarctica, where researchers fear their living laboratory may be in jeopardy. Those stories and more just ahead on SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK. Hello, and welcome. I'm Ann Kellan. When you think of football, you may think of a primal, physically demanding sport with longstanding traditions, but like everything else in the digital age, football has felt technology's influence. From the sidelines, here's Rick Lockridge.</s>RICK LOCKRIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Super Bowl media day, a chance for players to show off their other skills, give us an idea of what's inside those helmets, including talking with us about the way technology has changed the game.</s>BRAD HOPKINS, TENNESSEE TITANS TACKLE: We have in our facility computer banks that have every bit of film stored on them, so there's no need for the conventional</s>VCR. LONDON FLETCHER, ST. LOUIS RAMS LINEBACKER: You can just punch certain things into a computer, and they can print out what they like to do on 1st and 10, or 2nd and 3, and -- it's amazing.</s>DICK VERMEIL, ST. LOUIS RAMS HEAD COACH: The computer tells us everything everybody's been doing by down and distance, and it tells us everything we've been doing.</s>LOCKRIDGE: NFL players love their gadgets. Media day looked like a giant electronics show. And some players told us they'd been tackling the Internet, too.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I bank on the Net; I check my investments on the Net.</s>HOPKINS: I use the Internet to find cars. UNIDENTIFIED MALE I look at Rams on the Net. I look at the NFL.com on the Net.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I look for houses.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a lot of things, man. I'm just like a Net junky.</s>LOCKRIDGE: Technology has also trickled down to that perennial Super Bowl sideshow, the NFL Experience. Here you can throw to virtual receivers, and get chewed out by former Bills coach Marv Levy if you miss your target.</s>MARY LEVY, FORMER BUFFALO BILLS COACH: Make it work. You can do it.</s>LOCKRIDGE: Chris Duda's toss glanced off the receiver's fingers. But like a born quarterback, he shouldered the blame.</s>CHRISTOPHER DUDA, ASPIRING QUARTERBACK: Maybe I could time it better, or he could have a bad defender.</s>LOCKRIDGE: You can get your own trading cards, a digital camera, a Powerbook, and a high-end printer, and there you go. There's a cyberzone, where you can go to do all the hitting you want, without having to hit the Advil later on, and there's free I.D. cards for kids, a high-minded way for Canon to show off its digital technology.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to give this to mom or dad, and you're going to tell them to keep it, just in case you get lost someday, they can go to the police and say, "Hey, we can't find, Jeffrey," and this is what he looks like, and this is how tall he is, and this is how much he weighs.</s>LOCKRIDGE: Oh, yes, and there's also some football, too. Hey, it's still a simple game. You catch the ball -- I said, you catch the ball. Oh well, if you want someone to do it, right, get a girl. For SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Rick Lockridge.</s>KELLAN: Thanks, Rick. In an era of long commutes, grueling workdays, latch-key kids and working moms, quality time is more at a premium than ever, which is why you might be interested in a few technology time-savers that could uncomplicate our complicated lives.</s>KELLAN (voice-over): If the old saying is true, time is money, and we're spending it like never before. That's why there's so much emphasis on time-shifting, using technology to reorder the ways we work, communicate and entertain. And if our lives are becoming more chaotic, Can technology help us win back some control in balancing our home lives and careers.</s>JAG SHETH, EMORY UNIVERSITY: Today, we don't have the traditional family, where you have a breadwinner and a homemaker, you know. Today, everybody is blurring the roles, so this boundary that we create between work and home, if you don't have the boundary, it's easy for me to manage both.</s>KELLAN: In less than a decade, cell phones have gone from invisible to indispensable, with 80 million and growing in the U.S. alone. Your work and your home life can find you anywhere -- well, almost anywhere. Then there's the mailbox. It wasn't too long ago that all your mail came once a day in hard copy, stuffed in a box, out by the street. (on camera): Nowadays we call that "snail mail," and much of our correspondence arrives at the speed of light, into our living rooms or offices. (voice-over): But handheld computers,. small enough to fit in the lap a laptop, and even pagers, are offering full access to the Internet and e-mail, with ever improving speed and storage capacity, For many of us, we'll save the time it takes to get to either the snail mailbox or the computer. Our mail will follow us around. But how much time you save depends on how much mail you get. For some, saving time means ignoring the in-box. Time may still be a little bit more on your side in home entertainment as well. Already on the hot list are new video recorders, like Tivo and Replay, souped- up VCRs with enough storage capacity to skip commercials, plan your own instant replays and see the programs you want when you are ready. And if the commute to office is growing as daily dread, the long- held promise of telecommuting may soon pay off -- sort of. (on camera): With increases in bandwidth, the speed by which information can come and go to your computers, along with video conferencing and other technologies, working from home, at least part- time, may be an option for more of us.</s>SHETH: And most experts believe that three days at home and two days in office is an optimal solution. But you need come to the office.</s>KELLAN (voice-over): The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says nearly 20 million of us telecommuted at least one workday per month last year. And AT&T; reports that telecommuting employees can save the company up to $10,000 in missed productivity costs, in addition to saving the employees own travel time. But some worry that telecommuting may be a little too close to the honor system to work for some types of jobs, some type employees and some types of bosses.</s>SEAN KALDOR, INTERNATIONAL DATA GROUP: The problem is that other employees and employers tend to assume human nature takes over, and these people are not working as hard as someone who is more readily underhand.</s>KELLAN: Human nature notwithstanding, it won't be long until our homes are as wired as our offices. Then it may be amount of time we spend in scenes like these that creates the incentive to work at home, and that may be only a matter of time.</s>KELLAN: Coming up: Technology in the 21st century -- find out what's likely to remain plugged in and what might end up a technosaur.