This goes to show that even seemingly ridiculous (from the layman's POV) technology can be eventually used to create tecnology that can directly better our lives.
This was originally designed to detect alien life on other planets, but was converted to look for heartbeats and breathing under rubble.
It certainly makes for a hell of an executive summary for a project status report.
"The bad news is we still don't know if there's life on Mars. But the good news is we just located 4 men under a flattened Dunkin' Donuts in Kathmandu".
However, the claim that this is "based on technology used to detect alien life on distant exoplanets" sounds dubious. Exoplanets are far too distant to use radar on them at all, let alone pick up alien life signs.
I tend to think those four men, and the many others who died would have preferred the money had been spent on the simple, known process of better earth quake proofing the buildings in the region.
I'm not anti science for sciences sake, but this is not a logical argument. Bettering lives in Nepal is cheap and easy with current tech.
I think you might be replying to a different idea than reverend_gonzo was proposing. I think he's just noting that not-obviously-useful technological advances can have unexpected applications. I don't read him as saying that not-obviously-useful technological advances are the best way to save lives in Nepal.
If you just want to save lives, donate to whichever charity GiveWell[1] says is the best charity at saving lives per dollar. Every other use of money is vulnerable to the "but you could save more lives a different way" criticism.
With their GDP, only if someone else does it. Plus Nepal is filled with some very old temples and the like which are not going to be easy fixes; if they survived this long its a testament to chance or their builders.
Bring up their GDP through economic development which will eventually provide the money needed for better construction but that will need to wait until their political situation settles down.
This technology is really awesome, but I have to admit that I am scared to death of anything that can find me by my heartbeat under 6 feet of building rubble. The first thing that came to mind were those robotic octopi from The Matrix.
It would be pretty hard to hide from a totalitarian government in an attic if that government had sufficiently comprehensive residency information and this sort of technology. Count the bodies in each house on a regular periodic basis, and then figure out which ones consistently have more people than their census report indicates.
You could probably come up with some sort of regimen that would have people coming or leaving the house such that the number of people in it always stayed below what was indicated on the census, but it would still be a major concern.
I'm not sure whether you need such sophisticated technology for that. A smart meter will do for this purpose. And the data mining for that can be applied remotely, no need to bring any fancy stuff to the site.
Why is our first response to new technology one of fear? This is a device designed to find alien life, the article is about it being used to save human lives, but all you see is a tool to find and attack you.
This isn't meant personally; you see this "Dystopia ex Technology" in Hollywood movies and popular novels. For every "Pacific Rim" we have, there's several "Matrix" clones ready to tear down our confidence in machines.
It's not the machines we fear. Most people do understand that it's not the tools but the people using them, and we know far too well the sort of people those are likely to be. The dystopian nightmare has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with governments. It's always been so.
You realize that there was an article just today about a large spy agency violating the foundational laws of the country it was chartered in and using technology to spy illegally on citizens there, right?
The reason that people have a negative reaction to technologies that can be used for spying is that right now, in real life, spies are committing crimes against citizens using virtually every technical facet of modern society.
The most impressive new technology is often the result of massive spending by entities far more powerful than myself.
Guns are technology which can directly kill me, but I'm not too worried about guns, or even must gun owners. But when you're talking about a technology that (due to massive cost) is only available to governments with questionable oversight, that gets worrying.
In this specific case, I'm not particularly concerned - but you can see how the availability of the tech in question matters. If only people who are already more powerful than me can have it, it's much more likely that its power can be (ab)used to my detriment.
Yeah, the technology seems tailor-made to amplify schizophrenic paranoia; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9507458 for an example saying, "I suspect that this technology was used by an upstairs neighbor to track me around the apartment and electronically harass me using a microwave device. He would use a pulsed RF/microwave device (a Directed Energy Weapon [2]) to irradiate me as I moved around my apartment and also while I slept."
It's going to get harder and harder to reassure delusional people that their delusions are false when they become technologically feasible.
First of, Thanks for this technology that helped save some of my countrymen. This goes to show that technology can indeed help in many avenues to save lives. I am originally from Nepal living in NYC, and looking for ideas that could create technology-aided sustainable development as a key to rebuilding. Ideas that come to me, which might have high $$ values for implementation are - 3D printed housing, Organic Farming for quick rehabilitation on these villages, Open-Source BTS for communications etc. As costs go lower, these affected areas might be the right place to implement these. As much as I am devastated by what is happening in Nepal right now with the death toll only rising, I would like to reach out to the technology community out here or anywhere to provide me with ideas into helping us rebuild. Most of the relief efforts are donation-based, however, for longer term - creating a sustainable economy in these low privileged areas with the help of emerging technologies is what I think is crucial for faster recovery.
I distinctly remember Tom Clancy writing about this type of technology near the end of Rainbow Six (published in 1998) -- He always seemed pretty well informed on what was undergoing testing if not what was actually in use.
There have been dozens of similar frauds since, where the snake-oil-salesmen just dress up a dowsing-rod with blinking lights.
Remember, Tom Clancy was a fiction writer in the same vein as Dan Brown novels or CSI TV shows. His main nod to realism was in realms like military jargon or describing the correct fire-selector for a given model of gun.
I came here to say this, a device for tracking heartbeats was described quite extensively in Rainbow Six. I got the impression it was more of him extending his fiction creative license than drawing any inspiration from a real product, though. But it does make it very exciting that there appears to be an actual way of doing this.
Readit News
This was originally designed to detect alien life on other planets, but was converted to look for heartbeats and breathing under rubble.
"The bad news is we still don't know if there's life on Mars. But the good news is we just located 4 men under a flattened Dunkin' Donuts in Kathmandu".
I'm not anti science for sciences sake, but this is not a logical argument. Bettering lives in Nepal is cheap and easy with current tech.
If you just want to save lives, donate to whichever charity GiveWell[1] says is the best charity at saving lives per dollar. Every other use of money is vulnerable to the "but you could save more lives a different way" criticism.
[1] http://www.givewell.org/
Bring up their GDP through economic development which will eventually provide the money needed for better construction but that will need to wait until their political situation settles down.
Dead Comment
You could probably come up with some sort of regimen that would have people coming or leaving the house such that the number of people in it always stayed below what was indicated on the census, but it would still be a major concern.
Related are sentences that are grammatically correct, but semantically nonsense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_fur...
This isn't meant personally; you see this "Dystopia ex Technology" in Hollywood movies and popular novels. For every "Pacific Rim" we have, there's several "Matrix" clones ready to tear down our confidence in machines.
The reason that people have a negative reaction to technologies that can be used for spying is that right now, in real life, spies are committing crimes against citizens using virtually every technical facet of modern society.
Guns are technology which can directly kill me, but I'm not too worried about guns, or even must gun owners. But when you're talking about a technology that (due to massive cost) is only available to governments with questionable oversight, that gets worrying.
In this specific case, I'm not particularly concerned - but you can see how the availability of the tech in question matters. If only people who are already more powerful than me can have it, it's much more likely that its power can be (ab)used to my detriment.
It's going to get harder and harder to reassure delusional people that their delusions are false when they become technologically feasible.
(It's a valid sentence, honest)
But it also says it is getting harder and harder to hide...
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/24/local/me-26013http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker
There have been dozens of similar frauds since, where the snake-oil-salesmen just dress up a dowsing-rod with blinking lights.
Remember, Tom Clancy was a fiction writer in the same vein as Dan Brown novels or CSI TV shows. His main nod to realism was in realms like military jargon or describing the correct fire-selector for a given model of gun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligenc...