Back at University - Things have changed

Recently I started studying for MAS-MTEC at ETH Zürich.

A characteristic of this post graduate studies is that most lectures are shared with graduate students.

I am impressed at how much studying today has changed from when I was studying a decade ago. This impressively shows how fast technology is changing the way we live, which I seem to forget in my every-day life.

The internet is ubiquitous when studying today: The studies are officially organized over the internet (lecture selection, examination registration, learning material distribution, task assignments, group formation for exercises ...).
On the first week I got a invitation to a DropBox share from somebody I actually do not know (probably a higher semester student) which contains over 1GB of "semi-official" studying material (solutions for exercises, example examinations, additional material ...)
One lecture even has a twitter hashtag.

Consequently practically every student is bringing a laptop or tablet to the lectures. I never have seen such a high local density of MacBooks as in the Marketing lecture :-)

Comparing that to when I started studying 12 years ago: I did not even own a cell-phone yet ... I also clearly remember when a lecture assistant suggested to use "Google", and I had never heard that strange term ...