GE Adventure

Ok. We should get this out of the way and fast.

Synergy.

I actually didn’t know until we were day 2 into this that GE invented that word. We were in the nanoparticles lab and they were showing ferrofluid (see below) and that outside of demonstrating magnetic waves they also use the nano iron particles in combination with another agent and inject you and the agent seeks out a tumor, and carries the ferrite particles, and then your tumor glows like crazy on an MRI.

Earlier we had seen a demonstration of an imaging agent that you can inject and it finds its way to a tumor and carries a special dye, and there is a companion overhead UV spectrum lighting rig, and when you are doing open surgery the dyed tumor (or veins or whatever they want to dye) will fluoresce like crazy on the monitors, so you either cut or avoid what you want.

I was being a good student and asked the nano folks ‘is that the same agent as the one they use for making tumors flourescent?’ and turns out yes, more or less, and because all the scientists and engineers at GE hang out together and talk about what they are up to, and, you know, find synergies.

I actually tried to comment on the synergy without using the word synergy, because the rest of the world has turned it into a lame-o business buzz word, and Noah was like ‘you know they invented that word right?’ and I was like ‘huh I guess they had to’.

Then we were talking about how we could do some interesting interactive representation of the interconnectedness of things so we didn’t have to use the s-word, and talked about a few different things and then realized that the internet has worked this out already. If we do a good job tagging and linking everything, then you can find your own synergies, ha.

UPDATE: So I had to edit this because I had been using the word “drug” instead of “agent” in the above examples, and terminology-wise, a drug is a thing that fixes a problem, but in this case they are not actually drugs, just chemicals that deliver things to certain places.  Chemical deliverymen. Interesting.