QR Codes and the Afterlife

They're everywhere -- those little squares with the squiggles inside called QR ("Quick Response") codes.  The Covid pandemic of the last couple of years has accelerated their spread (pun intended)

Links to a relevant article

mainly as a touchless way to obtain information.  For example, in many restaurants the menu can now be accessed by scanning a QR code with your cell phone which opens a web page displaying the items.  No contact with a potentially germy paper menu is required. During the height of the pandemic access by QR code was almost a necessity -- printed menus were provided only by pleading with the wait staff.  For restaurants, the QR-accessed menu has the added benefit of allowing the offerings and prices to be changed quickly, easily, and inexpensively.  Efficient and germ-free, though not particularly elegant, I suspect even after the pandemic many low to moderate-end restaurants will opt to keep the QR menu.

The QR code was invented in 1994 in Japan (see Stazzone, 2021) for industrial inventory and tracking purposes. Unlike the older bar code that we see on products in retail stores, a QR code can be read both horizontally and vertically, allowing it to encode much more information. Confusingly, QR codes are often referred to as 2d "Bar Codes," though they contain no bars.  The name "QR" is actually a trademarked name of a specific form of matrix code.  There are other types of matrix codes, but the QR version has become so common that the name has taken on the status of "Bandaid" to refer to all adhesive bandages, or "Kleenex" to refer to all facial tissues (Stazzone, 2021).

There are a number of advantages to QR codes over standard 1d codes.  The pattern of squiggles allows for increased error correction so that up to 30% of the code can be damaged and still allow accurate scanning. Also, they can store much more information within the code itself rather than having to consult an external data base.  In a retail application this might include colors available, warranty length, or component details. Another advantage is that QR codes can contain a wider variety of information, such as email addresses, geolocation data, names, website urls.

As with all new technology, there are also some potential downsides and misuses of QR codes. Morey Haber of Forbes Magazine has detailed a number of these (Haber, 2020).  Most stem from the fact that  it isn't obvious from the appearance of the code itself what will happen when you scan it.  It could, for instance automatically direct your phone to a website that installs tracking software or even malware, dials a sales-pitch phone number, or sends an email to request more information while also recording and selling your email address.  Ne'er-do-wells may also substitute their own QR code for the original, as happened recently in Australia.  An anti-vaxer pasted his own code over official ones located at the entrances to retail establishments.  The official codes registered shoppers to allow contact tracing if they came into contact with someone with Covid, whereas the substitute code presented misinformation concerning vaccine safety and efficacy.  The best approach to avoiding these problems is to limit our scans to codes offered only by reputable organizations, businesses, and individuals for purposes that are clearly stated, and to be wary of any codes that appear to have been altered or substituted.

The amount and type of information that can be contained in QR codes has led to a wide range of both commercial and personal applications.  For example, my wife and I recently stayed in a hotel where scanning a QR code displayed in the room automatically logged us into the hotel's wifi network. It's even possible to create a code for your own home network for guests to use -- my Android phone has this feature built into the latest operating system, and there are online code-generation services available (for example, see Code Generator or Scanova).  Advertisements for products and services often contain a QR code that will lead to additional information about the product, even to online sales portals.  Some electronic products I've recently purchased have codes that link to the owner's manual. In museums the display tags for items often contain QR codes that play audio explanations.  At the gym where my wife and I exercise, each machine has a QR code that links to a short video demonstrating the proper use of the equipment. Finally, many uses of QR codes occur when the code is stored on your phone and then scanned by others -- airline boarding passes, entertainment tickets, organizational membership information, even vaccination and testing status codes.

Some of these applications are very creative -- even if a bit odd.  My favorite example of this is

From Rome Monuments Co.

something I came across recently that resonated with my somewhat questionable appreciation for graveyards (see My Favorite Cemeteries).  There are now a number of companies that will place QR codes on...wait for it... tombstones (Bhatia, 2020).  Visitors paying their respects, or just curious weirdos like myself, can scan the tombstone code and have access to the deceased's life history, eulogies, photos, or even as one academic has done, a complete list of his publications and citation metrics (Matyszczk, 2020). It can get even more "interesting" if you imagine that the QR code might trigger a video message from the deceased themselves -- parting words of wisdom or a last harangue, perhaps.

The ultimate, though, would be if tombstone QR codes were linked to the latest AI technology that allows conversations with deceased people (Bantham, 2019).  James Vlahos was the first to use AI (but not QR codes) in this way to keep the memory of his father alive.  Before illness overcame his dad, Vlahos interviewed him about his life experiences, attitudes, and philosophy, and had him relate anecdotes and stories about his life. This content was then fed to an AI Chat Bot program that can respond to questions in a naturalistic way,  almost like having a conversation. Vlahos has since founded the company HereAfter, which offers the same service to others for a fee, and has continued to refine the technology.  Other companies have also picked up the idea and there are now a number of platforms which allow interaction with the avatars of people no longer with us.  An informative review of some of these efforts is available in an article by Russ Bantham in "Transformative Technologies."

It seems to my warped mind that it might be easy to connect a tombstone QR code to the deceased's HereAfter avatar. Scan the code with your phone and have a chat with the dead person! Neat, huh? A phone call to the afterlife! And why not go all in by incorporating VR or AR so that the person's image is right there with you! I have little doubt some enterprising coder is working on this right now, and it is simply a matter of time before tombstone QR codes to interact with the dead are available.

One group of people who might not find this idea very appealing are psychics, who make a living contacting the deceased. Another group are those with different sensibilities regarding death. As Bantham notes: "Not everyone will be delighted at the prospect of conversing with the ghostly vestiges of late friends and family members, perceiving it distasteful and maybe a bit creepy."  Of course internet technology, especially social media, is notoriously indifferent to matters of good taste and sensitivity, so I doubt these people will have much effect.

There is an issue here that should at least be mentioned.  Is having AI-mediated conversations with a loved one the healthiest way to grieve or to honor their memory?  The urge to keep the embodied memory of the departed alive is understandable.  But honoring their non-embodied influence on our current everyday lives and the quality of our current experiences is important, also.  This is a matter of living more fully in the present and being mindful of the many ways they affect us in our attitudes, values, and outlooks, rather than being focused on the past.

We live in an age when developments in technology, like AI and QR codes, are increasingly infiltrating what used to be non-technical aspects of our lives -- our beliefs regarding the afterlife, memories of loved ones, and what it means to be "real,"  "true,"  or even "human." Whether the outcome will be positive or negative for society and for individuals is yet to be determined, of course.  But the challenge of figuring this out may be the most important project humans have ever faced.

Is Your Phone Smarter Than You Are?

Mine is, but it didn't used to be. I think there are two reasons for this change.

First, Geezerhood has progressively robbed me of more and more brain cells so that relative to my phone I've become dumber. And although I still have a few cells left but they don't seem to want to work together as well as they used to.

But there is a second far more interesting reason. Up until a few years ago I had a cell phone that looked like a Star Trek communicator. Although I tried hard, I could never get Scotty to beam me up, nor would the phone do any of those other nifty things the communicators did.  I traded that old "flip" phone for a newer sleeker model, but still it was only a phone, dumb as a post.  Then I finally succumbed to the techno-bug and bought a "smart" phone that has been getting disquietlingly more and more capable of what seems like intelligent behavior.  In other words, it may be getting smarter and I'm...well, let's just say "not."

In my attempts to keep my remaining neurons firing I like to keep up on current developments in information technology and the internet.  This was a topic I used to teach about and I am still interested in it, especially as it impacts our daily lives and also our society. One of the hot topics lately is artificial intelligence, or AI. There have been some significant recent advances in this area that support my suspicions about my phone and all other interfaces to the internet -- they are getting smarter.

The notion that computer systems could become truly intelligent has been around a long time, and the idea has gone through several cycles of optimistic over-hype and pessimistic disparagement. AI was legitimized as a serious field of research in the 50's, led by an impressive array of mathematicians and computer programmers who made striking progress initially but then stalled when certain problems became intractable, either because of the limits of theoretical approaches available at the time or because existing computer power and storage were insufficient. However, today you have more computing power in your cell phone than existed in a room-sized computer in the early days of AI, and recent breakthroughs in how we think of what constitutes machine intelligence have led to real-world applications of AI that are all around us and growing rapidly in number and scope.

Wikipedia attributes the recent surge in AI successes to three factors:  Advanced statistical techniques (loosely known as deep learning), access to large amounts of data, and faster computers.

"[These have]...enabled advances in machine learning and perception. By the mid 2010s, machine learning applications were used throughout the world. In a Jeopardy! quiz show exhibition match, IBM's question answering system, Watson, defeated the two greatest Jeopardy champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, by a significant margin. The Kinect, which provides a 3D body–motion interface for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One use algorithms that emerged from lengthy AI research as do intelligent personal assistants in smartphones"  [emphasis added]. (Wikipedia, "Artificial Intelligence")

One particularly instructive illustration of the power of current AI occurred in March of this year, when Google's AlphaGo program won 4 out of 5 games against champion GO player Lee Sedol. Computers have previously beaten humans at board games like checkers and chess, but they did so by brute force calculation of the potential outcome of each move. The complexity of GO, however, makes this nearly impossible, even with very fast computers -- it is said there are more possible positions in Go than there are atoms in the universe. Expert players have to rely more on an intuitive feel for the game at a higher intellectual level. As Demis Hassabis, one of AlphaGo's creators describes it, "Good positions look good. It seems to follow some kind of aesthetic. That’s why it has been such a fascinating game for thousands of years” (Wired, 5/16).  And it is also why designing an AI system that could play Go well has been such a challenge -- it would have to incorporate human intellectual qualities that go beyond mere calculation.

So one very important aspect of AlphaGo's success is that it functions more like human intelligence than previous attempts at AI.  A second is that AlphaGo doesn't just apply rules or logic, it "learns" by being exposed to massive amounts of data from which it "distills" knowledge. According to Cade Metz of Wired magazine, AlphaGo's development team:

"...fed 30 million human Go moves into a deep neural network, a network of hardware and software that loosely mimics the web of neurons in the human brain. Neural networks are actually pretty common; Facebook uses them to tag faces in photos. Google uses them to identify commands spoken into Android smartphones. If you feed a neural net enough photos of your mom, it can learn to recognize her. Feed it enough speech, it can learn to recognize what you say. Feed it 30 million Go moves, it can learn to play Go" (Metz, 5/16).

One particular move in the AlphaGo/Sedol match, #37 in game two, was particularly meaningful because it wasn't one of the moves AlphaGo had seen before and because the move was considered by many expert Go players to show an extraordinary level of "artificial insight" and mastery of the game.

"Move 37 wasn’t in that set of 30 million. So how did AlphaGo learn to play it? AlphaGo was making decisions based not on a set of rules its creators had encoded but on algorithms it had taught itself.AlphaGo knew—to the extent that it could “know” anything—that the move was a long shot. 'It knew that this was a move that professionals would not choose, and yet, as it started to search deeper and deeper, it was able to override that initial guide,' [developer] Silver says. AlphaGo had, in a sense, started to think on its own. It was making decisions based not on a set of rules its creators had encoded in its digital DNA but on algorithms it had taught itself. 'It really discovered this for itself, through its own process of introspection and analysis.' " (Metz, 5/16, my emphasis added.)

This ability to go beyond a rote set of programmed instructions is one of the most important and significant qualities of the recent advances in AI -- with both positive and negative potential implications. On the positive side, it greatly enhances the power of AI systems to do all kinds of complex tasks for us. The neural net/machine learning approach that was used to develop AlphaGo is being applied to many other areas as well, including search engines, facial recognition, biometric scanning, robotics, speech recognition, robotic navigation and manipulation, data mining, control systems for self-driving cars, managing complex scheduling operations, etc.

But there also may be a dark side, because this type of AI ceases to be understandable and predictable by its creators. As Jason Tanz of Wired puts it, "...With machine learning, the engineer never knows precisely how the computer accomplishes its tasks. The neural network’s operations are largely opaque and inscrutable...When engineers do peer into a deep neural network, what they see is an ocean of math: a massive, multilayer set of calculus problems that—by constantly deriving the relationship between billions of data points—generate guesses about the world." (Tanz, 2016).

This loss of control has led to some serious warnings about the potential for dire negative future outcomes.  For example, the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking cautions "One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand...Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all."  Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and many others share similar reservations, leading to a recent Open Letter in which they and over 100 other experts have drawn attention to this issue and have called for efforts to lessen the probability that the technology will go awry. "We recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial: our AI systems must do what we want them to do" (my emphasis).

Hmmm.  Sounds good.  But I'm not sure my phone is doing what I want it do even NOW......

__________________________
Sources and Resources:

Artificial Intelligence, Wikipedia. 

AlphaGo, Deepmind

"What the AI behind AlphaGo can teach us about being human."  Cade Metz, Wired, May 2016.

"Soon we won't program computers. We'll train them like dogs." Jason Tanz, Wired, May 2016.

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates Warn About Artificial Intelligence, The Observer, 2015

Open Letter: Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence, Future of Life Institute

Smile! You're [Always] On Candid Camera!

PARANOID:

adjective -- someone characterized by suspiciousness, persecutory trends, or megalomania. Example:  "The author of Snow Crash is not at all paranoid."

AKAMAI:

adjective -- Hawaiian word describing someone who is wise, astute, and discerning. Example: "The author of Snow Crash is very akamai."

There is a billboard in Hamburg Germany selling beer in a very unusual way.  It tailors its message to fit the gender and age of the person who passes by, specifically targeting women (even to the point of telling men to go away) and reminding viewers who look too young that they must meet the minimum drinking age. It does this by using the latest in face-recognition software that quickly analyzes the features of someone and adjusts the ad content accordingly.  Similar billboards have also been deployed in the U.S. Some of you will recognize this as being disturbingly similar to one aspect of the 2002 Science-Fiction movie, Minority Report.  However, it is most definitely no longer fiction but rather very real. Of course, in the movie the billboard ads targeted the specific individual passing by, adjusting the sales pitches based on the person's past buying habits, level of income, current mood, etc.  That's not possible is it?  And certainly not legal even if it is possible, right?  Well........read on.

Other current examples of how this technology is being used range from "clever" to "creepy," depending on how how feel about privacy and marketing techniques.  Some applications are similar to the billboards described above, others take things in new directions. In the U.S., 50 bars in Chicago participate in a system developed by Scene Tap. which uses cameras to analyze each bar's men-to-women ratio and average age of customers in real time.  The information is then made available to people who install an app on their smart phones, thus "helping bar-hoppers decide where to go" (Natasha Singer, NYT).  In Britain, cameras at the fuel pumps of Tesco stations analyze the faces of customers to determine their age and gender and adjust ads being displayed on the pump's small video screen while the person is gassing up. Retailers in Europe and the United States are using mannequins equipped with surveillance cameras that can track the gender, age and race of consumers who pass by or stop to look at the mannequins (Megan Van Vlack, Oracle.com). These and similar systems can enable retailers to see how long people of a particular race or gender remain in the shop, and adjust displays and the store layout to try to enhance sales (Consumer Reports, 2015). 

The marketing research company Kairos has taken this even further by developing software that can analyze the emotional reactions of customers from their facial expressions and attention span while looking at a display, allowing sales strategies to be tailored accordingly:

"Emotion analysis, driven through facial cues, is a powerful tool for identifying subconscious emotional reactions to stimuli ranging from ads to how a user might interact with a physical or digital experience. If a user smiles with contentment when they look at that huge movie poster depicting Miley Cyrus, you know that you are picking up something that they may not frequently admit to. Of course, in that situation, it is highly unlikely that they would buy the Miley Cyrus poster to go on their bedroom wall, but you might be able to encourage them to take their younger relatives to see the movie, as a 'family duty' ... Attention span can also be used as a measure of intent or intrigue. The longer somebody looks at some form of promotion, the more they are clearly interested in it. It is possible to alter content on a display, dependent on how long somebody stares at it." (Kairos White Paper)

None of the facial recognition applications described above involve determining the individual identities of those who are being photographed, but there are a number of instances in which this is being done, both with and without the knowledge of those being identified.  Presently there are no legal restrictions on collecting and using faceprint data, as Consumer Report summarized in a recent article:

"Facial recognition is largely unregulated. Companies aren’t barred from using the technology to track individuals the moment we set foot outside. No laws prevent marketers from using faceprints to target consumers with ads. And no regulations require faceprint data to be encrypted to prevent hackers from selling it to stalkers or other criminals." (CR, 2015)

To be fair, most of the current commercial examples of tying facial recognition to personal identification seem benign (albeit a smidge intrusive). For instance, according to Consumer Report, in 2010 a Hilton hotel in Houston introduced a facial recognition system as a security enhancement by tying facial analysis by cameras to the hotel's current registration list.  The same software was also used experimentally to alert employees when VIP guests were present so they could greet them by name. "The hotel wouldn’t comment on whether that program is still active. But facial recognition companies are actively marketing their systems to hotels" (CR 2015).  Other applications from FaceFirst and Herta are being deployed not only as security systems but also to identify preferred customers and alert employees so they can offer personalized service and tune their sales strategies (such as in-store discounts for those who opt in as part of a rewards program). Of course, the behavioral data that can be gathered for these individually identified customers is extremely valuable both to the company collecting it and to other businesses who might readily pay handsomely for it -- think targeted email lists on steroids. Someday soon you might be surprised when you are greeted by name as you enter a store you've never visited before -- your faceprint and shopping data have preceded you.  There is currently no law to prevent this kind of information sharing among merchants.

There are a few applications that aren't motivated by either security or marketing motivations, but not many.  One of the more novel uses of facial identification is called Churchix.  According to the creators' official description: "Churchix is a face recognition based event attendance tracking software ...  designed for Church administrators and event managers who want to save the pain of manually tracking their members attendance to their events. All you need to do is enroll high quality photos of your members into the software data base, then connect a live video USB camera or upload recorded videos or photos – and Churchix will identify your members!" I wonder if version 2.0 will also assess the mood and wakefulness of the attendees?

All facial identification systems rely on a database of digitized faceprints to link a new image to a particular person's name and personal information. Thanks to social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, organizational rosters, and online dating services, such databases already exist and contain not only photos we have eagerly uploaded but a wealth of personal information as well, like birth dates, interests, and employment histories.  And the restrictions we think are in place about who can access those databases are often quite wrong, as revealed in a study conducted at Carnegie Melon University where nearly half of FaceBook users erroneously thought their profile photos were not viewable by all other FaceBook users.  Further, researchers in the Carnegie Melon study were able to determine the names, individual interests and background information for about 30% of the people in a sample of anonymous photos by simply matching them to publicly available Facebook profile photos. They were also able to identify the first five digits of the Social Security numbers of more than a quarter of those people whom they had identified (for ethical reasons they didn't try to obtain the full SSN's).

No hacking was involved in the Carnegie Melon study because the researchers didn't have to -- they simply used currently available facial recognition software and readily available social networking information. Imagine the treasure trove of data that awaits skilled hackers who gain access to other faceprint databases like those being developed by governmental agencies.

One particularly juicy target is the FBI's NGI database, estimated to contain around 52 million records and still growing which include not only fingerprints but also faceprints and other biometric data (see a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for details).  Although most of the records are for those with criminal records, about 4.2 million are for innocent people who have applied for jobs in which the employer requested a background check or required a fingerprint and photo as a condition of employment. Another hacker's dream is the database maintained by the U.S Department of State, which has the "largest facial recognition system deployed in the world with more than 244 million records" (EFF, 2014). When these databases are coupled with widespread deployment of cameras in public venues and with recognition software like Churchix or Herta's described above, the capability for real-time and archival surveillance of both known bad guys and people whom our current political environment deems potential evil-doers is greatly amplified. Those who yearn desperately to feel safe in a world that they perceive as increasingly threatening probably regard this as a good thing. However, the vulnerability of supposedly secure databases was demonstrated in 2015 by two major breaches of U.S. government sites holding personnel records and security-clearance files that provided access to sensitive information for at least 22.1 million people, including not only federal employees and contractors but their families and friends (see Washington Post, 7/18/15).  Even without the issue of potential hacking of government faceprint files, there are legitimate concerns about who can access the data and how it can be used that haven't been thoroughly addressed or even examined at all (EFF, 2014).

Facial recognition technology is perhaps yet another instance where technical capabilities have outpaced society's consideration of their implications (see also my earlier blog The Drones are Coming! ). In this case there are serious issues of privacy, security, and the right to choose when, where, and how our personal identifying information is used that need to be addressed quickly and thoroughly -- it's the akamai thing to do.

See you later...........and keep smiling!
_________________
Sources and Resources
Facial Recognition:  Who's Tracking You in Public?  Consumer Reports, 12/15
Face Recognition and Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality (PDF), Carnegie Melon Study, 2014
Face Recognition Moves From Sci-Fi to Social Media.  New York Times, 11/12/11
Tesco's Plan to Tailor Adverts via Facial Recognition Stokes Privacy Fears. The Guardian, 11/13
Facial Recognition Technology is Everywhere. It May Not Be Legal. Washington Post, 6/15.
FBI Plans to Have 52 Million Photos in its NGI Face Recognition Database by Next Year. EFF, 4/14
UK's Spy Agencies Hold a Massive Database of Ordinary Citizens. CNET News, 4/16.
Hiding From Facebook, Snow Crash, 7/12.

The Drones are Coming! The Drones Are Coming!

DJI Phantom

Actually, the drones are already here, and many more are on the way.  The international market research company Deloitte estimated the number of non-military drones reached 1 million in 2015, driven by sales of 300,000 during that year alone. Business Insider predicts the consumer market will grow by 19% annually for the next 5 years, and Teal Group estimates $93 billion will be spent on non-military drones over the next 10 years. In other words, soon that buzzing in your ear won't be a mosquito, it will be your neighbor's drone.

Until recently the military was the big player in the field of drones, where they have proven invaluable in reconnaissance, spy work, and even as tactical weapons.  However, their military debut was not a smooth one and it took a team of renegade military researchers working against the establishment to develop the first workable weaponized model, called the Predator.  A fascinating article by Wired Magazine recounts how almost everything about the project was cobbled together from off-the-shelf pieces of technology but assembled in a uniquely clever way that proved its worth and introduced a new era in modern warfare.  In October of 2001 a pilot sitting in Virginia fired a missile from a Predator drone in Afghanistan and killed a Taliban commander's two bodyguards. Remote-controlled war with a joystick was born. Military drones require a complex and expensive support infrastructure and the drones themselves can be very expensive depending on the size and capabilities.  In contrast, small commercial and consumer models now available are very inexpensive and simple to operate.

The rise of small drones for commercial and private use was made possible by several technological advances that have come together at the same time: lightweight and durable materials for the drone's structural components;  wireless communication via hand-held computer devices (such as smart phones and tablets); easily programmable flight control circuits that can take advantage of GPS systems; lightweight, powerful, small rechargeable batteries; small high-quality cameras with live video and recording capabilities.  The low cost of consumer-level drones also makes them attractive -- just a few hundred dollars and you're all set.  Drones at this level are touted as potentially having great commercial usefulness, for example to deliver small online purchases, provide agricultural monitoring, allow visual inspections in hazardous environments, provide low-cost mobile security surveillance, and many other industrial applications. One of my first personal encounters with a drone was when a neighbor recently put his house up for sale and the realtor used one to take some of the promotional photos. As useful as these and other applications sound, the possibility of large numbers of drones flying around at once is a sobering thought, and some kind of oversight seems essential to keep it orderly, safe and minimally intrusive -- problems that are currently being considered by various agencies like the FAA and CAB.

The explosive growth of the number of non-military "hobbyist" drones has brought challenges that in some ways parallel those of other technological advances, particularly the cell phone.  The rapid deployment of cell phones outpaced social norms and protocols for using them, and we are still catching up.  For example, we continue to debate how these devices should be used appropriately in public situations where the cell owner's conversations are a potential distraction and annoyance to other people -- such as on airplanes and in restaurants.  Drones have the potential to be at least as disruptive and they expand the potential to invade other people's privacy -- wouldn't it be tempting to fly your camera-enabled drone over a celebrity's house or use it to spy on your neighbor?

In addition to the privacy question, the nuisance factor of personal drones with cameras looms large.  Imagine a sporting event where spectators send their drones over the action for a better look, ruining the visual enjoyment of the event for other people in the stands.  Or imagine visiting a monument like Mt. Rushmore or a national scenic treasure like Yellowstone Falls and having to contend with a cloud of "selfie-drones" vying for best camera position. In some cases steps to deal with the nuisance factor have already begun.  I recently visited Volcanoes National Park here on the island of Hawai'i and noticed a NO DRONES sign at the entrance gate and at scenic overlooks.  If ever I were tempted to fly a drone myself, this is the place, particularly to get a better look at the lava lake that is just barely visible from the observation platform about 1.5 miles away at the summit of Kilauea Volcano. However, the majestic impact of this awesome sight would be greatly diminished if dozens of private drones were buzzing around, and I applaud the restriction.  Maybe a compromise would be to have a park ranger fly an official drone over the caldera once at hour or so, with the live video feed being fed to monitors for visitors to watch.

As you might guess, the potential of drones has not been lost on nefarious ne'er-do-wells, criminals, and even terrorists. British police report drones being used to case houses and businesses for burgleries, and to smuggle drugs into prisons.  In Japan a drone landed on the office bulding of the Prime Minister, and in the U.S. drones have landed near the White House. According to a chilling assessment by CNAS, a bi-partisan think-tank focusing on national security:

"Though most COTS [Commerical Off The Shelf] drones have relatively short range and limited payload capacity, they have been successfully used to smuggle drug packages and could be modified to carry explosives, firearms, or other damaging objects instead. To date, The Wall Street Journal reports, 'authorities in the U.S., Germany, Spain, and Egypt have foiled at least six potential terrorist attacks with drones since 2011,' and more can be expected. The difficulty of monitoring and regulating the sale of such systems in the future – a major contributor to their appeal to disruptive actors – is compounded by the fact that they are dual-use, with both military and civilian applications, and unlike firearms do not require registration." (CNAS 2015 Report, A World of Proliferated Drones)

Much of the drone's appeal to the Bad Guys is that their small size and modifiability makes them very transportable, concealable, hard to detect at low altitudes, and difficult to restrict from designated areas. The CNAS report explains this problem very clearly:

"While some COTS drones contain firmware that restricts flight in designated 'no-fly zones,' such as those around airports and certain national security landmarks, skilled programmers could remove these restrictions. Furthermore, such restrictions do not apply to drones assembled from component parts....given the construction material, small size, and flight altitude of most hobbyist systems, they are rarely visible on radar and are therefore particularly difficult to detect. For this reason, defenses against them often require either visual or possibly auditory identification or concerted signal-jamming to disrupt the operator’s communications link with the system and/or the system’s GPS. Most such detection methods however, require either a pre-existing knowledge or expectation of the system’s presence in a given area and thus are markedly less effective against unanticipated use. And as future systems begin to incorporate GPS-independent means of navigation, such as visual-aided or inertial navigation, signal-jamming will cease to be an effective countermeasure. For these reasons, hobbyist systems hold significant disruptive potential." (CNAS Report)

Although there may be no perfect defense against drone misuse, there are still some ways of making malfeasance more difficult. Authorities in tech-happy Japan are taking a "Drone versus Drone" approach with special six-propeller drones equipped with a 10'x6' net that can snag violators right out of the air.  Laser guns that can knock out the electronics of drones have been developed by American and British companies. In contrast, Police in Holland and in Britain are considering “a low-tech solution for a high-tech problem” by using trained eagles to
hunt down and destroy offending drones. It seems eagles react to drones as rival birds of prey and instinctively attack them to defend their territory, and their eyesight is so good they can easily avoid the propellers.

There are several takeaway lessons worth noting in the drone phenomenon.  First, technological advances are hard to predict.  Few people expected ten years ago that today there would be over a million drones in private hands. But this is neither the first nor last time that a major technological development has caught us by surprise and we should probably resign ourselves to expect the unexpected in the future.

Second, technology invariably has unintended and unanticipated consequences.  Drones have been used since the 60's in the military, but the sudden proliferation of small drones intended for recreational and commercial use has brought with it a host of issues that have little to do with recreation or business -- serious issues of privacy, safety, security, and social interaction. The suddenness and intensity of these consequences causes significant social disruption and an uncomfortable feeling that things are out of control until our institutions and social mores adapt to the new challenges.

Finally, the pace of scientific and technological advance seems to be increasing, perhaps because much of the time progress rests on incremental achievements in many fields, and a single technological development, like small inexpensive drones, results from a novel joint application of newly available knowledge in several seemingly unrelated areas. We are in an age of tremendous scientific advancement in a range of disciplines from nano-tech to astrophysics that offer opportunities for unparalleled numbers of technological innovations. For better or worse, I suspect this pace is not going to slow down anytime soon.

Ok, that's it. I'll just "buzz off" now if you don't mind...

One Way That Chip Credit Cards Aren't More Secure

Within three days of arriving in "Country X" fraudulent charges began appearing on our credit card account from vendors elsewhere in the country.  (I'm withholding the name of our destination because I don't want you to think there is something uniquely dastardly about people there -- this was just as likely to have happened in any large city in the U.S.)

We were particularly frustrated because this was the maiden foreign voyage of our new Barclay chip-and-pin credit card that my wife and I obtained after a trip to Europe to last year, where our antiquated and grossly insecure swipe-and-sign card had proven to be a major pain in the butt -- see my blog, American Travelers Abroad: The Chips Are Down. As soon as we noticed the fraudulent charges we naturally notified the company, whose solution was to cancel the card immediately.  They assured us that we wouldn't be liable for the fraudulent charges and that they would send a new card immediately.  Oh, ok, that's grea.... Wait -- we were thousands of miles from our home and since we were traveling for the next month we were moving targets for any attempt to deliver a card somewhere else.  Bottom line is that we had to go without that bright shiny, chip card for the rest of the trip.  We fortunately had a couple of fall-backs -- the old swipe and sign card we had replaced because it was inconvenient and insecure, and an ATM card.

So what had happened?  We racked our brains to try to figure out how this supposedly more secure card could have so easily become the plaything of nefarious ne'er-do-wells.  We had used the card a number of times after starting the trip, but it never left our sight because this country, being somewhat more advanced than the U.S. in these matters, follows the practice of bringing a point-of-sale-device to you and inserting your card into the machine right in your presence.  And since these were chip transactions, they were much less susceptible to some fancy electronic hack of the payment system. Hmmm....

It then occurred to us that the Barclay fraud department agent we had spoken to said that the transactions had been "manually" entered, the same way your credit card details are entered when you make a phone order or a mail order for merchandise.  These are called "card-not-present" transactions.  The proper security procedures in these cases is for the merchant to ask for information that (supposedly) only someone in possession of the card could supply -- namely the expiration date of the card and the CVV ("Card Validation Value").  The CVV is that three digit number printed on the back of your card, or in the case of American Express, the four digit number on the front.

Gee, how in the world could some criminal get our expiration date and CVV?

How about by looking?  All a clerk has to do is glance at your card during a card-present transaction to obtain this information.  It's then a matter of having sophisticated cronies who can charge merchandise by phone or mail order and then have it delivered to some temporary pick-up point.  Or perhaps the merchants supplying the illicit goods or services might be in on the scheme. If they're lucky the victim won't notice the transactions on their card statement, something more likely in the case of travelers who make a number of foreign charges that are hard to recognize as fraudulent ones, especially if currency conversion makes the amounts unfamiliar.  If the charges are reported as fraudulent, as in our case, all that happens is that the merchant is forced to reverse them.  Note there is no real victim if the merchant was in on it -- the credit card company isn't out anything, nor is the merchant, nor is the customer.  Seems to me like a good way to reward bad behavior.

Note that this is a potential problem regardless of  whether you have a chip card or not.  All currently issued credit cards are susceptible because they all have CVV's and expiration dates on them.

Am I being overly paranoid (in addition to my many other personality quirks)?   Not according to a number of sources, including the highly respected internet security firm, AVG which gives this explicit advice about the CVV:

"...when purchasing an item or service in person, you should never provide the details of your CVV...Handing over your CVV for purchases completed offline serves no purpose other than providing someone with the opportunity to steal the information. Because if they were to do this, they’d have everything they need to go ahead and make a bunch of fraudulent online [and offline] transactions – on you! 
...Don’t provide your CVV when processing a payment in person. It should never be required and if someone tells you otherwise, it’s a reason to be highly suspicious!  " (AVG article by Michael McKinnon, January 15, 2015)

Unfortunately, the wisdom of AVG stops short of telling you how, during an in-person transaction, you can prevent a clerk from seeing the CVV and expiration date.  If the transaction requires a signature, the clerk is perfectly justified in turning the card over and looking at the signature and even refusing the card if it hasn't been signed.  That CVV is right next to the signature on most cards and even easier to spot on Amex cards.  And even if a signature isn't required a little artful fumbling with the card can allow a quick glance at the code.  I'm not the only person to have made this observation and the security risk it entails -- see Henry Bagdasarian's paper on CVV and Identity Theft Awareness. In other words AVG's admonishment to never hand over your CVV information during in-person purchases is nearly impossible to follow.

My solution has been to black out the CVV's on all of my credit cards (I keep the numbers in a cloud-based secure service where I can access them if I need to).  I found, though, that the number is hard to obliterate completely because it is actually embossed into the card surface.  Still, the number can only be seen by tilting the card back and forth to catch the light just right, a rather obvious maneuver.  Another approach suggested by Bagdasarian is to tape a small piece of paper over the CVV. 

In my humble opinion, credit card companies are foolish (I had another word in mind) to put this important information right on the card.  It really should be treated like a pin, with the same level of secure handling. When I did research for this blog, I came across several references to developments that will make CVV theft more difficult in the future by using something called a "Dynamic CVV," essentially a code that changes for each transaction. (See articles by CNNMoney, Credit Card Reviews, and Money Nation).  Don't hold your breath, though.  The estimated cost of these cards to produce is about 10 times that of a chip card, which is in turn about 6 times more than an ordinary swipe and sign card.  And credit card companies are all about the bottom line -- it is generally cheaper for them to absorb fraud losses than to upgrade technology.

The current switchover to chip cards will be expensive -- about $8 billion for the card companies, and about $25 billion for merchants, according to CNNMoney analyst Jose Paglieri.  But as Paglieri and many others have pointed out, the new U.S.-style chip cards really aren't that much more secure if lost or stolen because they don't require a pin. So why isn't the U.S. joining the rest of the world in moving to chip-and-pin?  Paglieri suggests it is at least partly a matter of profit -- banks charge merchants more for each signature transaction than one involving a pin (currently only debit cards) and would lose huge amounts of revenue.  Retail merchant lobbyist Mallory Duncan has made this point very clear about the motives of credit card companies:  "They'd rather have fraud-prone signatures, because it potentially makes them more money than a secure PIN."

Of course, as my experience shows, even chip-and-pin cards are vulnerable to certain kinds of fraud, namely the CVV scam.  In the future we are probably not going to have cards at all and instead move toward something like ApplePay, which most analysts believe to be much more secure.  That reality is some ways off, however, and in the meantime we will remain vulnerable to preventable fraud.  The reassurance of banks that the customer isn't financially liable for fraudulent charges is bogus.  The hassle and inconvenience of dealing with a compromised credit card account can be major wastes of time and energy for the account owner.  Further, the $ billions in card fraud each year don't just vanish -- they are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for goods and services.

Banker's Math wins again.

________________________________
Source Links

You're about to get a new credit card ... and it's an epic failure - CNNMoney, Mar. 25, 2015

Card Verification Code (CV) -- Identity-Theft-Awareness.Com)

Your Credit Card Security Code (CVV) – Is It Safe To Give Out? AVG.Com

Credit card of the future could stop fraud - CNNMoney, Mar. 26, 2015

Could Dynamic CVV Be the Card of the Future? - CreditCardReviews.com

This Morphing Credit Card Stops Fraud - Money Nation 

TechnoWoes

Tech'no'woe, n.
1. a term invented by the author of Snow Crash to denote grievous distress, affliction, or trouble arising from difficulties with information technology devices.
2. a state of frustration and exasperation from trying to deal with too many @#%$! electronic gizmos and gadgets
3. a glitch, problem or failure of software or hardware that results in much wasted time, effort and emotional energy to solve or remedy.

I am not a Luddite.  I am not a technophobe.  I do not shun modern technology, as evidenced by my cell phone, Ipod Nano, two Ipod Touches, one Ipad, one laptop, two desktop computers, a wireless home network, two GPSr's, a flatscreen HD tv interfaced with a home theater sound system and dvr, wireless home alarm system, even a battery-operated corkscrew. And I'm pretty savvy at maintaining my tech arsenal and keeping its software and hardware up to date.

I enjoy using these devices -- they're useful, entertaining, informative, and they generally enrich my life. Indeed, it is hard to imagine doing without them.  My life would be much more difficult and tasks would be much more time-consuming.  No "Googling" a topic to get instant answers to almost any question, no mobile access to the thousands of tunes in my music collection, no online banking or computer-assisted financial record keeping and financial planning, no watching t.v. shows at my convenience and without commercials, no quick exchanges of messages with friends and family, no talking on a cell phone at the beach, an airport bathroom or a supermarket queue!  How primitive life was in the ancient past of  20-30 years ago, before we had these devices!  How did we do it?

Now the big HOWEVER.  As wonderful as all this technology is, my experiences with it are sometimes frustrating, exasperating, and a huge waste of time. This is partly due to the sheer number of devices, so that one or more of them always seems to have a problem at any given time. Another reason is that their underlying workings have become increasingly complex and opaque, making the causes and cures of glitches much more difficult to figure out.  I've nicknamed these technical failures "technowoes."  Here are a few recent examples:

The Forced Upgrade That Shortened My Life By Two Days

For many years I've relied on a certain well-known financial program to keep track of my money and to help me plan for retirement spending.  The great thing about this software is that with a touch of a button it will update the value of my portfolio, give me a current net worth value, and project my financial balances into the future given current spending levels.  As a retiree I find this is really helpful for budgeting and financial decision-making.

The software company upgrades the program every year or so but the newer versions generally don't have a huge advantage over the current one so I don't automatically purchase the upgrade.  However, after a few revisions the company withdraws support of the one feature I find essential -- the portfolio update -- and makes it available only in the newest edition.  Cha-ching! Forced upgrade.

I recently shelled out the money for the new version and installed it on one of my computers.  The installation seemed to go smoothly enough at first, with no cryptic error messages or system crashes. But then... technowoe.  As part of the upgrading process my old data file was converted to a new format.  When I ran the new program my balances were now wrong for several investments, obviously a major snafu.  Puzzled, I proceeded to spend many hours comparing the old and new data to see where the problem was, re-installed the new program several times, and in general pulled every trick I had in my Geek-wannabe repertoire.  I finally solved the problem in a way I'll talk about later.  But in the meantime this piece of technology that I relied heavily on was a major pain in the rear.

The "Free" Security Program That Actually Cost a Lot of Antacid

My old employer, Miami University, wisely furnished students and faculty with a fairly good anti-virus program that included regular updates provided at no cost through its site license.  As a retiree I was able to continue using the program and its update service.

Recently, however, university budget cuts led to the (unwise, imho) elimination of this service, with the somewhat lame recommendation that users switch instead to Microsoft Essentials -- a mediocre replacement that is free to anyone with a Windows PC.  Being the paranoid fellow that I am, I searched for a better (but still free) program by going to several authoritative sources that compare and evaluate software. I settled on one and installed it without major problems.

For a couple of weeks everything seemed to be fine, including the automatic updating feature (a crucial aspect for any anti-virus software).  Then the problems started.  One of my computers would suddenly freeze and it wasn't apparent why.  This of course required rebooting the system, a time-consuming procedure akin to watching paint dry or grass grow. A day or two would go by and then this would happen again, always without warning and without any obvious cause.  Since the last change to the computer was installing the anti-virus program I began to suspect it was the culprit, though why it would crash my system was a mystery.  I finally determined that the software was indeed the likely problem in a way I'll discuss later.  I selected another anti-virus program that so far has worked fine.  Difficulty solved, but with a lot of wasted time and frustration...and technowoe.

The Acceleration of Obsolescence

Back in the good old days (maybe 5-10 years ago) if you bought a new techno-toy you could expect several years of service before (1) it physically crapped out, (2) its lack of features compared to newer models made it either embarrassingly inferior or (3) the increased demands of new software outstripped the device's resources.

Not now.

Case in point is the blindingly fast obsolescence of my Apple products.  When the IPOD Touch first came out I was very intrigued with it but didn't buy one right away.  I'm not what the marketing gurus call a "First Adopter" -- I wait to see what the final verdict on new techno-toys will be and for the bugs to be worked out of the first round of devices. When the 2nd generation Touches came out I was ready, and bought one in March of '09.  This was my second Apple product and it won me over immediately, especially because of its usefulness during the considerable traveling that my wife and I do -- maps, email, destination info, itinerary details, etc.

Less than three years passed before its features and performance were so inferior to the newest version that in January of '12 I shelled out for a 4th generation model.  Among the must-have features were a front and rear-facing camera capable of stills and movies, and the ability to sync information with our other Apple product, an Ipad.  But my original 2nd generation Itouch is too decrepit and old to allow syncing -- in less than three years it went from wondrous techno-toy to techno-brick. The late Steve Jobs was truly a marketing genius.....

The Recursive Cure for Some TechnoWoes

I mentioned above that I was eventually able to solve my problems with the financial program update and the new anti-virus software.  I did this by using technology to overcome technological problems, namely by Googling or Binging my symptoms.  (The obsolescence of my Apple product was solved more crassly -- by spending money.)

Using a search engine to look for solutions to technowoes almost always leads to the revelation that no matter how unusual or odd you think your difficultly is there are others who have had the same or similar problems.  It also reveals something that has been true of the internet since it began -- there are many very smart people out there who are willing to share their knowledge and help you solve your problem. This sense of community and mutual support was at one time the hallmark of the "net," and it is very gratifying to find that there is a remnant of it in today's commercialized, socialized and politicized cyberspace.

The online repositories of technical wisdom used to be in various "USENET Groups" which were topical forums where people posted questions and others offered answers. Although the information you needed was probably there in the forum somewhere, in the early days there was no easy way to search previous discussions -- you simply had to look through the old postings or consult a FAQ that tried to summarize the most common questions and answers. These open forums still exist, of course, as do company-sponsored support forums.  But now searching for key words or for the entire wording of an error message is almost absurdly easy with search engines like Google and Bing.  The value and usefulness of this information is dramatically increased by its retrievability.  In fact, try to imagine the internet/WWW without search engines -- I doubt very much that its growth and infiltration of our lives would have been nearly as dramatic as it has been.

I should add that using technology to fix technological problems may still require a bit of Geekiness.  The information provided online often requires translation into ordinary language and sometimes involves arcane actions, like issuing "command line commands," or using REGEDIT. Of course, an alternative is to use a company's  customer support service. However, I phone tech support only as a last resort because it usually involves even more wasted time waiting for the call to go through, then struggling though a long frustrating session trying to understand the guy on the other end with a thick accent who claims his name is "Bob" or "Eric."

Technowoe is probably with us to stay.  It's part the price we pay for living in a wondrously technological era, and overall probably worth it.

But there are times when I yearn for the days of fewer gadgets and fewer problems.  Pass me my slide rule and typewriter, please.

Hiding From Facebook

I'm a pretty tech-savy guy.  I have a blog and my own homepage.  I have three email accounts. I own three computers, two Ipods and an Ipad. I manage our home wireless network.  I back everything up in the cloud. I'm a webmaster for an educational resource called PsyberSite. I've even taught courses about how the internet has influenced our society, for example "The Social Psychology of Cyberspace."

You might think I would be in the thick of the social network phenomenon --Tweeting and Google +'ing and Facebooking like crazy.  But you would be wrong.

There is no doubt that these recent developments in internet technology are having a tremendous impact on social relationships and the structure of our social world.  As a social psychologist I regard the social networking phenomenon as something that is very significant and fascinating to study.  And to my friends  who are Facebook fans (some of whom are reading this right now), let me assure you that I appreciate the many positive benefits this technology can have -- staying in contact with friends, sharing important life experiences with them, finding and reconnecting with old friends, and in general adding to the social richness of life. 

However, my personal reaction has been quite different.  You see, despite (or maybe because of ) my close involvement with internet technology over the years I have a skeptical, aversive, even paranoid stance regarding these latest social developments.  My wife and I do have a Facebook page, but we hardly ever post anything on it.  We have a whopping total of 36 Friends, a pretty puny number compared to some people who have hundreds.  And I admit it is fun to read the posts of others and to learn of the events in their lives and the lives of their family and friends.  But we both balk when it comes to sharing the same sort of information on our own Facebook page.  I should point out here that my reluctance is greater than my wife's, and she has sometimes expressed regret at feeling left out of this phenomenon.  (Perhaps we will soon go our separate ways and get individual accounts.)

I think there are a couple of reasons why I'm hiding from Facebook, both of them stemming from personality flaws that are long-standing and deeply rooted.

First, I'm generally a very private person and even in face-to-face situations I'm not comfortable disclosing personal information, even to very close friends.  Of course, professorial pontificating is an entirely different matter, and I have never been reluctant to do that, though my students often viewed me as "aloof" and "impersonal."  I think I'm friendly and approachable but I'm hesitant to be very open except with a few people I've know for a long time.

It is possible on Facebook to divide "friends" into differing categories like "Close Friends, " "Acquaintances,"  "Family," and even to create your own divisions.  You can also create groups of "friends" within each of these categories depending on interests or activities and then share different information with people in each one.  I don't know how many Facebook users take advantage of these features, but I find the categorization process very daunting and fraught with the danger of forgetting who is in which group and posting something that inadvertently offends someone or is at least regarded by them as inappropriate.

Another related issue for me is that as part of my private personality it is difficult to feel comfortable with the high frequency that seems to be the norm in posting Facebook information. Even with very close friends I much prefer fewer but more intense and personal interactions.

My second reason for hiding from Facebook may be that I have this "thing" about institutions or organizations that quickly become big and powerful, no matter how benign they may seem.  (See my slogan for Snow Crash.) My negative reaction is a complex bundle of paranoia, issues with authority, and wanting to assert independence by being non-conformist -- in short, not entirely rational.  Facebook is indeed big, reaching 750 million users in just eight years. And it has certainly become powerful as well.  As Steven Johnson noted in a recent Wired Magazine analysis, "Facebook is on the cusp of becoming a medium unto itself—more akin to television as a whole than a single network, and more like the entire web than just one online destination.....The difference, of course, is that no one owns the web—or in some strange way we all own it. But with Facebook we are ultimately just tenant farmers on the land; we make it more productive with our labor, but the ground belongs to someone else."

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, wants us to be able to share everything, "...to make the world more open and connected."  He has created an interface that makes sharing extraordinarily easy to do -- but also that makes it easy for our social connections to be tracked and exploited.  Here's a small excerpt from the list of data Facebook receives and stores about users, taken from its Data Use Policy:

• We receive data about you whenever you interact with Facebook, such as when you look at another person's timeline, send or receive a message, search for a friend or a Page, click on, view or otherwise interact with things, use a Facebook mobile app, or purchase Facebook Credits or make other purchases through Facebook. 
• When you post things like photos or videos on Facebook, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date, and place you took the photo or video. 
• We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook, including when multiple users log in from the same device. This may include your IP address and other information about things like your internet service, location, the type (including identifiers) of browser you use, or the pages you visit. For example, we may get your GPS or other location information so we can tell you if any of your friends are nearby. 
• We receive data whenever you visit a game, application, or website that uses Facebook Platform or visit a site with a Facebook feature (such as a social plugin), sometimes through cookies. This may include the date and time you visit the site; the web address, or URL, you're on; technical information about the IP address, browser and the operating system you use; and, if you are logged in to Facebook, your User ID. 
• Sometimes we get data from our advertising partners, customers and other third parties that helps us (or them) deliver ads, understand online activity, and generally make Facebook better. For example, an advertiser may tell us information about you (like how you responded to an ad on Facebook or on another site) in order to measure the effectiveness of - and improve the quality of - ads.

I get very nervous when I read that list, despite assurances that my information is shared only "after we have removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it."  It seems to me that the detail contained in the information makes it very personal indeed, whether my name is associated with it or not.  I note also that the use to which my information may be put is rather open-ended.  I really don't know the specific ways Facebook uses tracking information and so I just have to trust that it will be benign.

My issues with authority and control lead me to get nervous about another aspect of Facebook -- its tendency to try to keep me within its warm and fuzzy embrace.  For example, a recent unannounced move was for Facebook to change people's email addresses that they had listed in their public profiles to addresses that use a Facebook email account.  If a friend sends a message to me at earthlink.com, for instance, it gets delivered to my Facebook email account instead.  Another development is Facebook's "Open Graph" initiative to encourage users to install apps that function within the Facebook interface even though they utilize content from the broader internet.  For example, if a friend has posted a link to a Washington Post news article, clicking on that link doesn't take you to the Washington Post web site, but rather serves the article to you through a internal app that you must install within Facebook. Of course, keeping a user within the Facebook interface allows even more thorough tracking of online behavior.  Wired's Steven Johnson raised a broader and more philosophical objection in his article that resonates well with my personality quirks:

This reluctance to link to the outside is, to say the least, hard to reconcile with Zuckerberg’s paean to open connection. Hyperlinks are the connective tissue of the online world; breaking them apart with solicitations to download apps may make it easier to share data passively with your friends, but the costs—severing the link itself and steering people away from unlit corners of the web—clearly outweigh the gains. Surely we can figure out a way to share seamlessly without killing off the seamless surfing that has done so much for us over the past two decades.

In the meantime, I'll just keep hiding......
 

"Call" of the Wild

Once a month my local hiking club organizes a day-hike to some interesting area. Most of the people in the club are "mature" adults -- meaning the real hard-core young adventure types aren't with us. Still, the group consists of mostly fit people who are serious about exercise and enjoying the great outdoors, and the hikes are often in fairly remote and wild places.

Every other month the hike is publicized in the local newspaper and non-members are encouraged to join us. Not long ago one of these public hikes was a trek along an old historic trail that crossed some very difficult and remote terrain. The challenge of the trail and the isolated setting fostered an appreciation of the hardships and simplicity of an earlier time. I was enjoying the scenery and the physical exertion, chatting occasionally and briefly with fellow hikers, but mainly absorbing the uniqueness of the moment as I hiked alone.

From behind me I suddenly heard a very loud voice describing the beauty of the trail and how wonderful the hike was -- not unusual comments to hear but not at a such a startling volume level. When I looked back I saw a newbie talking into a cell phone, apparently so eager to share their experience with the person at the other end that they didn't mind violating the serenity of the group around them.

There are lots of aspects of this we could explore, like the need for norms of etiquette surrounding cell phone use, or the implications for society when the superficiality of technology-mediated relationships makes people desperate to maintain constant contact with others. The aspect I want to focus on, though, is how technology is changing our perception of natural settings and altering the way we interact with nature.

As my example indicates, many natural areas that used to be remote and cut off from easy communication with the outside are now accessible with a quick cell phone call. The access can include sound, still photos, and even video. Besides cell and internet links, gps technology makes navigation a matter of reading an lcd screen instead of paying close attention to the surroundings (I've written before about my own infatuation with gps -- see my blogs of 7/6/09 and 2/14/10).

This technology has made the "wild" seem less forbidding and more amenable to casual human activity, even when this is demonstrably untrue. One result is that people underestimate the risks and dangers that natural environments may pose. Rangers in our National Parks have seen this first hand, according to a recent investigative NYT article. For example, Jackie Skaggs, spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming reports “Every once in a while we get a call from someone who has gone to the top of a peak, the weather has turned and they are confused about how to get down and they want someone to personally escort them. The answer is that you're up there for the night.” People with cellphones call rangers from mountaintops to request refreshments or a guide; in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, one lost hiker even asked for hot chocolate.

One particularly telling instance of how perceptions of nature have changed is recounted in the same article:

"One of the most frustrating new technologies for the parks to deal with, rangers say, are the personal satellite messaging devices that can send out an emergency signal but are not capable of two-way communication. (Globalstar Inc., the manufacturer of SPOT brand devices, says new models allow owners to send a message with the help request.) In some cases, said Keith Lober, the ranger in charge of search and rescue at Yosemite National Park in California, the calls “come from people who don’t need the 911 service, but they take the SPOT and at the first sign of trouble, they hit the panic button.”

But without two-way communication, the rangers cannot evaluate the seriousness of the call, so they respond as if it were an emergency.

Last fall, two men with teenage sons pressed the help button on a device they were carrying as they hiked the challenging backcountry of Grand Canyon National Park. Search and rescue sent a helicopter, but the men declined to board, saying they had activated the device because they were short on water.

The group’s leader had hiked the Grand Canyon once before, but the other man had little backpacking experience. Rangers reported that the leader told them that without the device, “we would have never attempted this hike.”

The group activated the device again the next evening. Darkness prevented a park helicopter from flying in, but the Arizona Department of Public Safety sent in a helicopter whose crew could use night vision equipment.

The hikers were found and again refused rescue. They said they had been afraid of dehydration because the local water “tasted salty.” They were provided with water.

Helicopter trips into the park can cost as much as $3,400 an hour, said Maureen Oltrogge, a spokeswoman for Grand Canyon National Park.

So perhaps it is no surprise that when the hikers pressed the button again the following morning, park personnel gave them no choice but to return home. The leader was issued a citation for creating hazardous conditions in the parks."

For me, the telling point in this account is the group leader saying that without the emergency device he would have never attempted the hike. As park rangers have noted, visitors who get into trouble often acknowledge that they have pushed themselves too far because they believe that in a bind, technology can save them.

As this example illustrates, technology may be insulating us from the reality of natural dangers and the necessity of relying on our own knowledge, skill, and courage in experiencing nature. We regard nature as an extension of our hi-def televisions, Iphones, and computers -- configurable to our own user preferences and changing interests, and as having an "Undo" button if we make mistakes.

The problem is that nature doesn't always play along.