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GIVEN the grave sort of issues that are on our collective minds these days, when I read the headline on the BBC, I assumed that it referred to the migrants that too few want to have any truck with. Australia, after all, is hardly embarrassed about its stance on those seeking refuge on its soil.
So, when I read the headline ‘“Shark drones to patrol stretch of Australia’s coast’, I thought of how much potential technology has to improve the human condition, yet what tools of terror mankind insists upon developing.
Refreshingly, though, the story turned out to be good news — an effort to keep beaches safe for swimmers. By shark drones, they actually meant drone patrols, feeding images back to operators looking for the fish using GPS coordinates. A trial using these and ‘smart’ drum lines has been announced by the New South Wales government, where apparently there have been several shark attacks over the past year.
The mind can soar beyond the stars, but ugly ideas still persist.
Thousands of miles away, in Japan, technological innovation is being put into the service of man in a different way. Wednesday saw the inauguration of the four-day International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, the theme of which this year is robotic equipment for disaster relief, assisting the elderly, and for farming. The star exhibit was a pair of two-legged humanoid robots that can operate in harsh conditions such as the aftermath of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Small and slender, these robots have tiny heads attached with sensors. At the show, they showed off their usefulness in a simulation of a tunnel on fire, and made their way through fake debris to extinguish the flames.
I find the potential breathtaking. Given its particular needs — one could even say peculiar — Pakistan already has some automated bomb-disposal devices. There is at least one each in Peshawar and Karachi. These are robot-like machines on treads like those of tanks, which can approach and explore suspected bombs as well as relay information while the human operator remains at a safe distance.
In the aftermath of most disasters, one of the greatest challenges to searching out and rescuing survivors is the lack of access, either due to collapsed structures or because of dangerous conditions. How much more efficient might the rescue operations after the 2005 earthquake have been if machines like the robots in Japan could have been sent under the rubble to exactly locate where a person was, and what the conditions were around him? Or to map out the topography of the collapsed structure beyond what was visible?
The piece of news on the technology front that I’ve saved for last is the one that interests me most, and if it ever happens would be the realisation of the most far-fetched idea of sci-fi through the ages: indefinitely extendible human life. As reported by science magazines recently, a new start-up called Humai (Human Resurrection Through Artificial Intelligence) is working on transferring human consciousness into a new, artificial body.
The company’s CEO, Josh Bocanegra, promises they’ll resurrect their first human in 30 years, claiming “We’re using artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to store data of conversational styles, behavioural patterns, thought processes [etc].” According to those who can interpret tech-speak better than I can, the company wants to freeze the brain and put it back in an artificial body; the brain will then direct the new body via brain waves.
The caveat is that none of the technology to achieve this exists yet, and there’s hardly any evidence that it ever will (but then the World Wide Web was unimaginable until Tim Berners-Lee imagined it). It’s true that brain waves are already used in similar fashion, for example by being used to control artificial limbs and robots, but what Humai is talking about takes it to another level altogether. Still, if someone has started work on it, someone else will eventually follow, and thus, bit by bit, sci-fi becomes reality.
But alongside these fascinating developments that remind that the human mind can soar beyond the stars, there are also those that show how humanity insists on remaining bound to the ugliest of ideas. The Bodyguard Blanket started being marketed last year. Here’s what their website says: “School Shootings; Bullet resistant protective blanket for children and adults. Sizes: Small (child), Medium (small to medium size adult), Large (large adult).”
So in the US, school shootings are such a fact of life that they should be treated like fires and fire drills? “9:02am: Who would have guessed that on a quiet spring morning their lives would be forever changed by a sudden school tragedy,” proclaims the manufacturer’s website.
The California shooting is just days behind us. The Bodyguard Blanket wasn’t fuelled by warzone safety concerns, to take one example out of a variety of situations in which it could be used, but school shootings. That I find utterly chilling in its prosaicness, in the cynicism.
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2015
