Tag Archives: technology

Planned Obsolescence in Technology: 1930s to Today

Planned Obsolescence in Technology: 1930s to Today

There is a light bulb hanging in a fire station in Livermore, CA that was installed in 1901 and has been glowing almost nonstop since. It has a carbon filament, unlike incandescent bulbs of today, which use tungsten. It was originally a 60 watt bulb but now gives off the glow of a night light, but the fact remains it has been going for over 115 years. Incandescent bulbs of today have a rating of 1,000 hours and LED bulbs have a life expectancy of 50,000 hours. How did we get from a 115 year bulb to a 1,000 hour bulb to a 50,000 hour bulb? Is the life expectancy planned or completely arbitrary? How does this apply to other technologies?

Lightbulb Cartel

In the 1920s, light bulb manufacturers banded together to create the 1,000 hour limit. Sales of bulbs were flattening since no one had to replace them so, to stimulate sales, alternative materials were introduced to reduce the life expectancy. This created a new avenue for manufacturers, the replacement market.

The term “planned obsolescence” can be traced back to a 1932 business pamphlet. Bernard London proposed to end the depression by taxing people who used goods beyond their life expectancy. This included clothing, automobiles, tires, etc. In his treatise, he explained:

“I propose that when a person continues to possess and use old clothing, automobiles and buildings, after they have passed their obsolescence date, as determined at the time they were created, he should be taxed for such continued use of what is legally ‘dead.’”

Fortunately, this idea was never legislated but the concept seems to have caught on in modern consumer culture.

Old Before Its Time

There are many examples of goods that are discarded because of functional, natural, or style obsolescence. General Motors introduced the “model year” in the 1920s to entice people to purchase a new car to keep up with frequent style changes. In reality, the greatest functional automotive innovation came from the electric starter, which replaced the crank. Clothing styles change frequently as well in order to entice people to purchase the latest fashion.

The stage was set years ago for our current technology obsolescence cycle. Some would argue that our consumerism fuels a growing GDP or spurs innovation and new technological breakthroughs. Others would argue that it fuels mountains of electronic waste and discarded toxic chemicals and minerals.

Operating system upgrades create obsolete products by overloading hardware and firmware. This renders the product, whether it be a smartphone or a smart TV, obsolete and useless. Obsolescence also occurs when someone replaces one piece of technology, such as a computer or operating system, but not the associated printer. This creates a situation where drivers are no longer compatible and components either don’t work at all or work in a diminished functionality. Either scenario is frustrating.

Answers

Unfortunately I do not have the answers to the need for constant technology refresh but I am hoping to start a dialogue here so that together we can come up with a solution. I am the person still running Windows XP on one of my home computers. I understand the security and supportability implications in my decision, but it serves my needs just fine and I don’t think I am keeping any state secrets on my system.

In a previous blog post, I wrote about sustainable production and highlighted projects such as Google’s Ara which is a modular smartphone with replaceable components. I am heartened that there are people and companies that are tackling this issue but I think we all need to understand the potential outcome of our purchase decisions.

Thoughts

Let me know if you have ever been frustrated by a sudden lack of operability because of an upgrade or planned obsolescence. What is your answer? When you purchase a new product do you think about its total lifecycle? How does that affect your choice? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Education Trends in 2017

Image of a student walking a road labeled 2017 with a question mark on the horizon.I try to follow higher education trends to make sure I know what is coming and can gear my teaching appropriately. This blog highlights some of the strategies and technologies I think will emerge in 2017. We will see in 12 months if I was right.

Improved Distance Education

I think technologies that create a shared classroom experience will improve distance education in 2017. Students will increasingly enroll in distance education,  so it is important that we improve the virtual classroom.

Immersive virtual reality is growing in popularity. I was one of the first to try out HP’s Halo telepresence system, now a Polycom product. Each of the teleconference rooms were physically identical, right down to the wall coloring and furniture. The idea is that you see your colleagues across the country or the world on the bank of monitors in front of you and feel like they are just on the other side of the table. It is a good idea and it works great but is expensive to purchase and maintain. Imagine if you could take this same technology into distance education using virtual reality. You could hold debates, work on shared projects, and hopefully improve the overall education experience to the point where it approximates an in-person experience. A September article from the Center for Digital Education highlights some of the specific developments in this area. The experience won’t change overnight but it is an important tool to improve distance education and an area that I will be monitoring.

Industry Partnerships

I believe that we need to do a better job of matching curriculum with skills needed in the workplace. In ancient Greece, students attended Plato’s Academy to learn thinking skills and become philosophers. Today we also need to equip students with applied skills they can use to further the mission of an employer. Rather than guessing what skills employers need, it is important to form partnerships and allow input into curriculum design. This could also lead to more internship opportunities where students could practice newly-learned skills. A strong partnership will help schools meet the needs of industry.

Standardized Certification System

Particularly in information technology and information management, there are a large number of available professional certificates. They range from security to advanced networking to systems administration. As an employer, how do I know whether a new or current employee presenting these certifications can really do the job? How do I know whether organizations offering these certifications are legitimate? Author Matthew Meyer, in a 2016 article, argued for a national certification system. This would be a certification system for certifiers, if you will. With the rising popularity of certificates this is an idea whose time has come because it would add some legitimacy to a certificate and assure quality and rigor to an employer. As I write this however, the American Commission for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) is fighting for its survival in the courts after the federal government cut off student aid for people attending those certified colleges. It could take several revisions to work out an appropriate certification body similar to the current regional accreditors for non-profit universities.

Political Changes

The political climate in the United States changed with the election and that could mean a shift in direction for post-secondary education. There could be more focus on vocational education, research, or toward non-degreed education such as skills-based certifications. The government influences the direction and emphasis on higher education through federal funds and guaranteed student loans. I believe that there will be a split emphasis on advanced research and skills-based education as we focus on current and anticipated workforce needs.

Thoughts

There is a lot changing in higher education and it’s an exciting time to work in this field.

What changes are you seeing in education? Are we taking advantage of technology and ideas on improving learning? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Technology Trends: 2016 Year In Review

Image of a butterfly on a robot's finger.This blog post is a review of 2016 technology trends and their impact on how we will work and live in the future. Many of the advances are continuations of work from years past, but we are getting ever closer to a different world.

Communication Technologies

MIT Technology Review publishes a Top 10 Technologies list and this year it included research from the University of Washington on passive wi-fi devices. The UW team has developed breakthrough ultra-low power devices that reflect the signal or backscatter from a nearby connected wi-fi transmitter. This is important because it will allow Internet of Things devices to be embedded in areas that can’t always rely on a traditional wireless signal. MIT suggests that this will be commercialized in two or three years and will help spread the popularity of small, connected devices.

Another emerging communication technology is the conversational or natural language interface. With the introduction of Amazon Echo, Google Home and other devices, it is common to have a spoken interface as opposed to typed instructions. We are finally moving away from text input thanks to innovations in speech recognition. In a recent report in the MIT Sloan Management Review, vendors are taking this one step further and capturing chat or speech conversations via bots in order to offer associated services. For example, your next pizza order could be through natural language input to an app while conversing with a bot recording your instructions. Surely with your pizza and bread sticks you must need a salad or soda that just happens to be on sale right now. The bot processes information from the context of the conversation and makes decisions and offers on the fly.

Cognitive Computing

Artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning is a technology that data scientists have been developing for many years and will continue to develop. Cognitive computing combines AI, natural language processing, speech, vision, and advanced data processing. These systems take input and match it to massive databases to form responses and learn new pathways. By learning and creating new algorithms, the system and applications are better able to serve you in the future. Examples of cognitive computing are IBM Watson and Google DeepMind. In the case of the pizza order above, cognitive computing is an example of how a computer can learn preferences and build responses appropriately.

Autonomous Technologies

Robotic and autonomous technologies have made strides this year as they move closer to mainstream adoption. Robots have been used for some time in industrial and assembly applications where consistency and precision is important. They also play a big role in areas where there are life and safety threats, such as search and rescue or in an area contaminated with toxic chemicals. We don’t have the same regard for the “life” of a robot as we do for humans. In that sense, they are very much welcome into our ecosystem.

Autonomous automotive technologies also made progress in 2016. Automakers are introducing applications like steering assist or autonomous steering and adaptive cruise control. New vehicles are slowly being equipped with technology that will eventually render them completely self-driving. Makers such as Volvo and Mercedes are testing more autonomous vehicles on public roads. Self-driving vehicles require advanced vision and learning systems provided by improvements in cognitive computing mentioned above.

Thoughts

Advanced communications, cognitive and autonomous technologies have all been in play in 2016. These are all interrelated advancements that often benefit each other. While exciting, these developments also bring worries, including economic and safety concerns with robotics and privacy concerns with learning systems and communications. It is important that we march into the future with a balanced perspective.

What do you see as the upcoming technologies in 2017? Will we see any breakthroughs? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Can Technology Help to Feed the World?

Aerial view of the tractor spraying the chemicals on the large green fieldThe world population is expected to exceed nine billion people by 2050 from an estimated 7.3 billion today, according to various sources. How will we be able to feed all of those extra people? Water is already in short supply so it will be difficult to create additional arable land. Forests around the world are being plowed under to meet this growing need, but in the process we are changing the balance of fragile ecosystems. A National Geographic author asks: How can the world double the availability of food while simultaneously cutting the environmental harm caused by agriculture?

The answer may be farms capable of increasing food production through technology while also reducing their environmental impact.

So Many Cows

Three Mile Canyon Farms in rural Boardman, OR combines a dairy operation with cropland dedicated to potatoes, onions, carrots, and various organic crops. The sheer size of this operation sets it apart from other private or even corporate farms. The entire ranch covers 93,000 acres and houses 24,000 cows that produce 165,000 gallons of milk each day. There are milk trucks lined up 24 hours a day to haul the milk to a nearby cheese processing plant. This farm is set up to be a closed loop system in terms of waste management. The manure is used to fertilize the potatoes and the potato skins and culls from the processing plant are used as feed for the cows. Any excess methane from the waste collection is used to create electricity for the operation. Automated milking machines collect the milk, which is how they are able to run such a large operation. The water for the potatoes and other crops comes from the nearby Columbia river but is used judiciously by employing computerized hydrology maps, which I wrote about in a recent blog. The farm has set aside 23,000 acres as a preserve for wildlife and endangered plant species. They are trying to reach a balance of feeding an increasing population while still being good stewards of the land and environment.

The Science of Crop Production

Another technology that is available is the controversial genetically modified organism or GMO. These modified seeds can achieve increased yield through built in drought or pesticide resistance. The manufacturer often controls the seed so it may not be widely available or affordable for emerging nations. The controversy surrounding GMO is that there are many unknowns. How will the genetic modifications affect the health of the consumer in this generation or in generations to come? How do we keep GMO seeds in one field from cross-pollinating with non-GMO seeds in another field? Will crops from GMO seeds have the same nutritional value as their unaltered counterparts? As with any new technology, there are initial barriers, but GMO is one potential solution for feeding a growing population.

Low Tech Solutions

In a Nature Journal article earlier this year the authors compared yields between organic crops and those raised with chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  Studies show a consistently lower yield for organic crops but when grown in drought conditions, the organic crops came out on top. This is due to the fact that non-chemically treated soils better retain moisture. Organic farming is potentially one piece of the puzzle for feeding a growing population.

Thoughts

Eighteenth century cleric and philosopher Thomas Malthus suggested in his book “An Essay on the Principle of Population” that prosperity would bring about population growth but that growth cycle was not sustainable and would eventually end in famine and starvation. It remains to be seen whether technology will help us forestall his predictions or whether his ideas are no longer valid. It is certain that we will need to produce more food for a growing population and technology is one way of achieving that. Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Geek Gifts for the Holidays

Hand emerging from laptop, holding wrapped gift.I am compiling my gift list for the upcoming holiday season and paying particular attention to my tech friends. New devices are being developed to provide comfort, efficiency, or just plain fun. What would be the perfect gift for my geek friends?

Smart Devices For A Smart Home

Google introduced Home last week, just in time for the holidays. It is similar to Amazon Echo as a home device that accepts voice commands and can queue up a music play list, answer questions or interact with other smart devices in the home. It is basically a voice activated internet device that is paired with home wifi to connect to cloud storage or various web sites to check weather, traffic, answer trivia questions, or activate audio from sites such as Spotify or Pandora.

Home can be paired with Nest products which are home control devices. Nest, like Google, is a subsidiary of Alphabet so devices are compatible. The internet connected Nest Learning Thermostat replaces a traditional home thermostat and can maximize energy efficiency and comfort at the same time. Indoor and outdoor cameras can also be integrated into the home system to be controlled via an app while away or Google Home while in the house. OK, Google, it’s cold in here, and what is that noise outside?

You can go one step further this holiday and add TP-Link Smart Light Bulbs to your home system. These are wifi LED dimmable bulbs that you can operate via a smartphone app, Amazon Echo and presumably the new Home. Check to make sure your lights are turned off or turn them on remotely to greet you upon return. You can also establish a timed schedule. Home automation devices have come a long way to ensure security and comfort during the holidays and the rest of the year.

Just For Fun

For the geek on your gift list there are some fun new toys. Nanotips makes a conductive paint you can apply to the fingertips of your favorite gloves so you can operate smartphones and tablets without exposing your hands. This would be great for my ski, motorcycle or biking gloves, but I still need to figure out how to make a sharper fingertip so that I can text.

The Tap A Tune Musical Gloves sound like a lot of fun. These are musical gloves that play like a piano on any surface. There are sensors in the fingertips that are fed back to the speaker/controller so you can practice the piano or compose a new tune anywhere.

Finally, for the geek on your list who also happens to be a Harry Potter fan there is the Kymera Magic Wand Universal Control. It works through gestures instead of boring buttons and provides haptic feedback so you know whether you are casting the right spell or changing the channel up or down.

Thoughts

Technology is constantly evolving and entrepreneurs are innovating exciting designs they hope will enhance our lives. Some are practical and some are just for fun. There are many products to help automate our lives and some to bring a smile or a laugh. What are you going to get the geek on your holiday list? Let me know of great potential gifts you have found.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Blurring the Boundaries Between Work and Vacation

Image of day planner with work x-ed out and "day off" written in.I was recently at a car museum full of beautiful automobiles from the last 100 plus years. In one of the exhibits I noticed a gentleman on his cell phone conducting what sounded like a business conference. If he had a family with him, they had already moved on to another hall. I thought about that. Amongst all of these fantastic cars, he saw the need to divert his focus. Was he multi-tasking or was he truly missing out on the opportunity that surrounded him? I wonder if we haven’t blurred the lines between work and non-work until they are undistinguishable.

Two Weeks to Infinity

A number of companies, mostly high tech giants like Netflix, have introduced unlimited vacation time. Software developer Hubspot, has gone one step further and coined their vacation policy “two weeks to infinity,” which means they encourage their employees to take at least two weeks off each year, more if necessary. Software maker Buffer takes it one more step by offering employees $1,000 to actually use their vacation time. In other words, the company is paying employees to make use of a benefit they already have. No wonder we’re so tired.

The caveat behind most if not all of the unlimited vacation policies is the unspoken phrase “as long as you get all of your work done.” In a Harvard Business Review article last year the author argued that whether an unlimited vacation policy succeeds or not depends on trust within the company. Some companies have found that an unlimited vacation time policy actually resulted in employees taking fewer vacation days because they feel pressure to work more without the traditional boundaries. The Tribune, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, rescinded their unlimited vacation policy in 2014 just a week after implementing it. With no vacation bank employees could no longer cash out their saved vacation hours when leaving the company, which turned out to be a coveted perk. Workers preferred the cash to the vacation. It can be hard to keep up with work, and vacation time suffers.

There’s an App for That

While we need an incentive or a reconstructed vacation policy in order to actually take time off, we also have more tools for conducting business while away from the office. Tools such as WhatsApp, Cisco Spark, and Facebook Messenger allow people to receive e-mails, texts or video communication on any device. Some of these apps also provide for screen sharing. They make use of the cloud by providing dedicated rooms for conversations and document sharing. At the same time, security is also important, often through message encryption. So, now we are afraid to take vacation in case we get behind in our work and even when we do take vacation, we are accessible to colleagues back at the office. If we are never offline, is it really a vacation? Is this the new norm?

Thoughts

I would love to hear your thoughts on the value of time off. Does a working vacation provide the same recharge as one where you are completely unplugged? Is the idea of “time off” going to go the way of the flip phone now that lines are blurring between work and non-work? Perhaps we need a new definition of work? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

The Data and Science of Irrigation

Photo of pivot irrigation system.I recently spent time among wheat fields and continue to be amazed at the advances in farming, particularly irrigation. I have moved a few irrigation pipes in my life, but my experience is a far cry from the automated precision technology used today. I set out to find out how technology and water mix and how the combination enhances crop production.

Crop Metrics

I have covered farm technologies in past blogs, specifically soil moisture probes. The use of these probes is only the beginning of the process for increasing crop yield. Several of these probes can be used per acre to collect data wirelessly on the moisture content in a particular area of the field. All of this data is combined into a visual map that shows the dry and wet spots. Topographic maps can be added to show the high and low spots of a field. All of this data acts as input to the irrigation system. Companies such as CropMetrics analyze all of these data points and create a comprehensive plan for covering the most ground with the least amount of water.

Precision Watering

Crop irrigation has evolved from a hose to hand lines to wheel lines to the modern pivot. A pivot pumps water through one point to several sprinklers radiating out from the axis. The pivot then swings across the field powered by a variable speed drive mechanism on each tower. The further the distance from the pivot point, the faster the wheels have to move in order to cover a larger arc. If you have ever flown over the Midwest in the summer you have most likely seen a grid of green circles, which is the result of pivot irrigation. One of the largest of these sprinklers is 1300 meters long, covering over 1300 acres of sugar plantation in Brazil.

Companies such as Lindsay and Reinke have transformed simple plant watering to a science by applying data analysis technology. They input the data mentioned earlier and create a series of water maps for a field. The GPS equipped irrigation pivot can then apply precisely targeted moisture to the field. Over an area of several hundred acres, there can be a lot of variability in soil type, existing moisture, runoff, and terrain. All of this information is factored in when watering the crops. The sprinklers can be automated, or adjusted manually through a touchscreen control or  an app. The goal is twofold: water conservation and maximum yield. This is one example of how technology is improving production while enhancing sustainability of a limited resource.

Thoughts

I see technology used in traditionally low tech areas such as irrigation and crop production and wonder what other applications are waiting to be enhanced or automated. It is a brave new world and it will take intelligent workers to make the most of it. Let me know your thoughts

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Finding Our Roots: The Technology of Genealogy

Vintage photo of books, journals, pens, and other tools of research circa 1930.There seems to be a resurgence of interest in history, particularly personal history and genealogy. Popular television shows such as “Finding Your Roots” and “Who Do You Think You Are” explore ancestry. Ancestry.com and similar websites provide a platform for discovering your lineage. I wonder if part of this interest is because we now have technologies that help us discover who we are and where we come from.

Document Scanning

The ability to scan and catalogue large numbers of documents has been a boon to genealogy research. We can mine the data from those documents to connect family lines. However, old documents are not always easy to read or access. A recent report from MIT highlights work that allows us to read fragile texts that cannot be touched or opened. Researchers are using terahertz radiation scanning and character recognition software to scan multiple pages at once. So far they are able to read through nine pages at once but hope to soon read through a whole book. This might someday enable us to read through ancient papyrus. They could one day unlock the information that links you to Cleopatra.

DNA Testing

Advances in DNA analysis have led more people to seek out testing, which adds more people to databases, which increases your chances of making family connections. Ancestry.com, mentioned above, sells a DNA collection kit for $99. Return a DNA sample and they will test it, add the information to their database and return the analysis that shows your ethnic mix and identifies possible relatives based on a match of DNA markers. This can be eye opening for people who do not know a lot about their past.

Record Matching

Advances in data analysis have improved the ability to match old documents in order to construct a family tree. Birth, marriage, death, and burial registries contain many errors that make them hard to reconcile. The town clerk in 1895 may have misspelled a name or recorded a date incorrectly so that it doesn’t match other official records. With modern data analysis, we can compensate for those errors and develop a “best guess” match for such records. Myheritage.com has proprietary matching algorithms that increase the chance of a correct records match.

Translation Software

Many of us do not speak the language of our ancestors, so when looking for records, we need translation. Researchers and technologists are developing applications able to translate names and other information from one language to another. Myheritage.com offers what they call “Global Name Translation” that breaks down the barrier of language. They describe this recent breakthrough in a press release in their blog:

“The new technology will now accept searches in English, automatically increase their scope to cover Russian and Ukrainian as well, and conveniently translate all results back to English.”

Such technology opens up a lot of possibilities that were once closed but can now help link family trees from different countries and cultures.

Thoughts

Technology can help bring people together and can aid our search for who we are and where we come from. It might even turn up a surprising connections to long lost family members. Have you used genealogy tools? Did they work? Let me know your experiences.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Star Trek Technologies: 50 Years Later

Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner post as Spock and Captain Kirk in a vintage black and white photo from the Star Trek series.The original Star Trek television series is celebrating its 50th anniversary so I have been thinking about some of the technologies they depicted that have become reality. Unfortunately, we still are not able to beam each other through space, but some of our current devices and applications have already surpassed the imagination of science fiction writers.

Set Phasers to Stun

In the TV series and the movies, characters always carried a phaser, particularly when they were exploring new worlds. This device had different settings and worked presumably by emitting a phased particle beam to either stun, freeze, or kill their opponent. Our equivalent is the taser, which I highlighted in a recent blog on law enforcement technology. It is different in that you need to make physical contact and it will only stun and not kill, except in rare cases. There is news that scientists are working on a real-life phaser, but that may just be wishful thinking from Star Trek fans.

Communicators

This is an area where I think we have surpassed the writers’ imagination. In the original Star Trek television series the characters used a cell phone type device to talk to another person on the ship. Nextel developed something similar in 1996 with their push to talk service over a standard cell phone. In subsequent franchises, the crew needed only to touch the logo on their uniform and they could start communicating. Fast-forward to 2016 when people walk down the street seemingly talking to themselves while communicating with someone not just on the proverbial ship, but possibly in a foreign country. How far we have come from the mythical communicator of 1966.

Telepresence

In the TV shows, the characters could communicate with each other via a telepresence video screen. They could even communicate with alien ships if their systems were compatible. Video communications were fairly foreign in 1966 but I think we now take it for granted. I was fortunate to be part of a pilot for HP’s Halo teleconferencing systems, now part of Polycom. The aim was to create identical rooms so that it appeared that your colleagues in Tokyo were just across the table from you. Now video communications have come to the smart phone through Skype, Google Hangouts, FaceTime, or Tango. That means our version of the communicator not only lets us speak to each other but also lets us do full video conferencing. Take that Captain Kirk.

Universal Language Translator

In a large universe it is necessary to be able to translate between many different languages. The crew of the USS Enterprise had a universal language translator they used to communicate with alien cultures. It somehow could translate any language. Our version is a bit more limited in the number of languages and I don’t think it currently translates Vulcan. Voice translator apps for smart phones are still in their infancy but work fairly well for about 50 languages. They feature speech to text or text to speech, and some have the ability to use the camera to capture and translate an image such as a road sign. I am excited about a new earpiece in development from Waverly Labs that allows you to hear and translate a foreign language. They are taking pre-orders now through Indiegogo.

Thoughts

Science fiction series such as Star Trek are a great catalyst for spurring our imagination about technology. An anniversary event is a great opportunity to reflect on our progress. Are there other Star Trek devices that we have already nailed? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Technology in Military and Law Enforcement

Photo of a drone in the foreground with the setting sun in the background.Police officers and military personnel face potential danger every day. This week we’ll look at technology that supports them and makes their jobs easier and safer.

Bomb Detecting Drones

According to a recent article, there are an estimated 100 million live land mines in the world. Many of these are from conflicts long past, but some are placed to sway the outcome of a current battle. Unfortunately there are no maps to show exactly where these land mines are planted. The Mine Kafon Drone can detect and destroy land mines and is currently looking for Kickstarter funding. It works by mapping an area and then using a metal detector to locate the mines within that area. When one is found, it is tagged with a GPS detector to mark its location. The drone then returns to the operator to be fitted with a robotic arm so that it can place small detonators on the mine. The mines are then detonated remotely with both the drone and the operator out of harm’s way. This is a great example of technology being applied to a serious and life threatening problem throughout the world.

Robots in Police Work

Police and rescue personnel use robots to find and retrieve missing people. These robots or drones can search for people in dangerous places; once a person is detected, the rescuers can plan a safe way to extract them. This is important in situations where someone is in a collapsed building or in an area where there are toxic chemicals.

Similar robots are now being used to neutralize a threat such as an active shooter. These robots are fitted with cameras and sensors, even guns or explosives when the mission is to eliminate the threat. These are used only as a last resort when negotiations break down or are not possible. As I think about the future of such devices, I wonder if we could apply this technology to war strategy. Can we ever get to a point where we choose an isolated location and each side sends out their best drones and robots to try to destroy the other side? The operators and other humans could be safe, far away from the conflict. Would it mean as much to blow up each other’s devices as to actually harm people? It would certainly be safer for us.

Thoughts

I am grateful for those who are developing technology to improve the safety of the men and women who protect us. I will be watching the development of the Mine Kafon Drone and other devices that detect and remove threats. Let me know of any similar technologies that you are aware of. I think this is a young but growing field.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.