Segues: Stop Scaring Yourself

Each Segues  column starts with something tech-related before quickly branching out from there into a tangentially related thread. These articles are born from my thought and speech patterns that regularly contain quickfire transitions. For one of my birthdays, a friend made me a crown that said “King of the Segues”. Actually, it said “King of the Segways” and that was the day we learned how to spell segue correctly.

Image by jmlawlor, flickr

Airwaves, newspapers and magazines, and general online chatter are filled with the myriad ways we choose to become paranoid over technology harming us. Rupert Murdoch shutting down News of the World because of hackers. China trying to censor web searches about the death of former President Jiang Zemin. Studies showing the increase of abuse women suffer through social media. There’s also the general fear robots are going to gain sentience before trying to replace and then subjugate/murder their makers. Some of these concerns are more rational than others. As someone who helped throw some fuel on this fire in the last Segues column (“The Future Is Here And It’s Horrifying”), I feel compelled to provide some words about how tech actually makes us safer.

Cars that are smarter than us
By now, everyone knows that talking on the phone while driving is more dangerous than not. The problem was thought to be the distraction of having to hold a phone in your hand, so in response to that fear and the supposed reason, the hands-free phone blew up in popularity. Too bad a recent report from the Governors Highway Safety Association concludes there “is no conclusive evidence on whether hands-free cell phone use is less risky than hand-held use.” Ironically, the advent of texting while driving exploded over the last few years in a way that dwarfs the use of hand-free phones. So, it’s not a surprise that the GHSA also discovered that texting does “probably increases crash risk more than cell phone use.”  How does this knowledge about the dangers of mixing technology and driving (that most of us knew even if we wouldn’t admit it) make us safer though? With the invention of devices that prevent us from acting out these dangerous behaviors. The ominously-named Textecution is an application for your android phone (or more likely, a loved one’s or employee’s phone) that can recognize when a phone moves faster than 10 MPH, and then it disables the phone’s texting feature. With Textecution, it’s impossible to send or receive text messages, while driving. There is an override option, but it involves asking permission from the administrator who installed the application through a text. Yes, I’m sure the creators of the app are aware of that momentary contradiction. Blocking someone’s ability to text while driving isn’t the only way technology can save us from ourselves in cars.

Before discovering sex, this was one of the coolest things I knew to exist.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland spoke with The Wall Street Journal back in January about how his organization is focusing on using new technology to save lives on the road. This involves everything from electronic stability control to rear-view cameras to control skidding to technology that can inconspicuously detect if you’ve been drinking too much. We’re still a far ways off from driving around in KITT from Knight Rider, but the mere fact that cars can now parallel park themselves (this makes me smile idiotically every time I see it) shows that we’re steering away from devolving into accidental stars of Death Race 2000 (I won’t acknowledge the crappy remake even if Jason Statham may beat me up). In the war to make ourselves safer through technology is the insertion of it into actual war scenarios.

Sex is still cooler, but I do have an urge to climb on and ride this.

We can make him stronger
Looking like an extreme sports version of a Segway, this one-man off-road vehicle by BPG Werks called a DTV Shredder can travel on travel on rough terrains such as “snow, sand, trails and even mountainsides at high speeds.” Its tank treads and skateboard trucks combine with a four-stroke engine, that can take you up to 30+ MPH, to make the Shredder an invaluable device for quickly maneuvering out of dangerous situations. It also looks seriously cool. That’s nothing compared to the DTV Jackal though, because it comes “equipped with two M32 grenade launchers.” I’ll honestly be surprised if this particular military toy is absent from the next James Bond movie, as it seems ripped straight out of an action movie fever dream.

Normally known for finding more inventive ways to kill people as one of the world’s largest defense contractors, Lockheed Martin has invented its own device to keep soldiers free from injury. Dipping into the science fiction realm itself, more specifically Marvel comics, Lockheed has created the HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier).

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kat8I5UM_Vs’]

The exoskeleton may take its name from the Green Goliath, but more closely resembles a rough prototype of Iron Man’s  suit of armor. According to the video, the HULC gives soldiers the “ability to carry loads of up to 200 pounds for extended periods of time and over all terrains” by increasing their “ability, strength, and endurance.” Somehow, the HULC senses what its user wants and where it wants to go. This dips into Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law for me (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”), but if it’s used to help, I’m all for it.

These are all good examples of how technology can save us from ourselves and on the battlefield, but what about the really dangerous enemies? How do we protect ourselves from zombies?

They can’t get our brains, Barbara
Architectural firm KWK Promes created this amazing “safe house” in a small village just outside of Warsaw, to give the client a“feeling of maximum security.”

This house is perfect for those with kinemortophobia, the fear of the undead. Or in other words, a fear of zombies. You have to cross through a gate for entrance into the courtyard where you then have to wait in a “safety zone” before someone lets you inside the house. When not locked down into a giant and grey concrete cube, the two story house has floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the surrounding countryside and an indoor swimming pool to help fill out its approximately 6,100 square feet. The southern side of the house cuts itself off from the world with an “enormous roll-down gate . . . made with white anodized aluminum which makes it possible to  function as a movie projection screen.” So, you can feel safe from zombies and also watch The Walking Dead while hiding away.

Yes, concerns over privacy issues are valid and we seem to invent new high tech methods every day to frighten us into having Luddite fantasies. But we can’t purely focus on the evil things, real or imagined, people do with technology. At its very core, technology is the use of knowledge to solve problems. Sure, some of those problems are of our own making, but that again is part of the give and take of advancing technology. Every time we put our asses in danger, we create some new technological achievement to save our asses. To steal a quote from another science fiction author this go around, Isaac Asmiov once said, “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” Maybe what we need to do is play catch up to our own creations.