In a bid to build a Canadian “Silicon Valley” of digital brainpower that can reboot the economy, three Ontario universities are planning a joint graduate program in downtown Toronto to tackle the challenges posed by new media and keep techno talent in this country.
In the vision shared by Ryerson University, the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo, the strip of Yonge Street from Gould Street to Gerrard Street would become a “digital destination” in a few short years.
It will be a corridor of i-research and “high-end digital stores all in one cluster that hums with activity,” said Ryerson president Sheldon Levy yesterday to the Empire Club.
“This thing that young people use so much — the iPhone, the iPod technology — is what we’re all going to use in future for banking, news, everything, but there are huge problems in making this change, from privacy issues to bandwidth,” Levy told the sold-out lunch crowd at the Royal York Hotel.
“Whoever can figure this out will be the leaders in the new economy. Our goal is to devise made-in-Toronto solutions for i-banking, i-business, i-news, i-industry, i-medicine and i-everything,” said Levy.
Ryerson
This fall, Ryerson will make academic records available to students on their smart phone.
