MH370 and Crowdsourced Sharks with Laser Beams?
The disappearance of MH Flight 370 has revealed a major gap in the Internet of Things: most of the world is water and lacks decent broadband coverage due to the ocean’s relative inability to transmit radio waves. Austin Powers fans will recall Dr. Evil’s obsession for “Sharks with Laser Beams” and we’ll see what MH370 has to do with them in a bit.
Crowdsourcing rapid technological innovation in emergencies
During the hunt for the plane, innovative technological solutions were crowdsourced that later were used in the investigation (perhaps through independent discovery by very qualified experts or perhaps as result of the crowdsourced suggestions). Proposals such as using the doppler shift to fine-tune the Inmarsat data, combine Inmarsat data with radar data, and use military antisubmarine sonar buoys were all proposed in online forums, days or even weeks before they were official announced by investigators as novel techniques used in the investigation. Many very good suggestions also were not used (perhaps because they were technically infeasible) such as checking weather satellites for contrails if atmospheric conditions were generating them.
Not every suggestion was serious. One comment we remember buried somewhere half-heartedly suggested attaching tracking telemetry to packs of sharks, whose ability to sniff the depths of the ocean would lead investigators right to MH370, presumably.
Talking Dogs and the Internet of Things
Some futurists think that dogs and cats may someday be connected to the Internet of Things. Some already are. There is the Peter Gabriel-funded non-profit Interspecies Internet. There is Project Fido, a wearable computer that allows working dogs, such as those assisting the blind, to communicate by tugging on special controls. Wearable computing for cats is apparently still wide open but only a matter of time, presumably. Once connecting to the Internet, it may be possible to have simple conversations with dogs of the future. SQUIRREL! (Sorry, we couldn’t resist that reference to the the technology-enabled talking dog of the Pixar movie ‘Up.’)
Sharks with Laser Beams and the Internet of Things
So, aside from the practical dangers of getting eaten alive when attaching the devices, why not include Sharks on the Interspecies Internet of Things? Surely Dr. Evil would approve of such a move? Admittedly, connecting warm & fuzzy aquatic mammals like dolphins, whales, maybe sea lions to the Internet might be a higher priority than that ancient monster fish known as the shark that survived the Cretaceous extinctions (the time when everything else was going the way of the dinos)
Talking Dolphins and the Internet of Things
For starters, unlike sharks, there are currently dolphins, whales, and sea lions that have found employment with humans (and not just at theme parks — there are real-world applications for a trained dolphin or sea lion). We’re not aware of any sharks that have found gainful employment, as apparently they’re difficult to manage. (We’ll resist the obvious lawyer jokes here.)
Also, unlike sharks, dolphins and whales periodically need to surface to breath, at which point you can transmit your telemetry via satellite and maybe even charge up using solar power. Sharks you may have to wait a long time before transmitting telemetry. In a situation such as the MH370 hunt, where time is of the essence, you want to able to immediately communicate with the shark to ask it if it’s seen the writ of habeas corpus. (OK we did the tasteless shark lawyer joke after all.)
Balloons, Drones and the Internet of Things
This also brings up the remote broadband issue. Both Google and Facebook have solutions for connecting millions of people in remote areas to the Internet. Google wants to launch Internet relay balloons, while Facebook is in talks to buy a solar-powered drone company that can keep an unmanned, autonomous Internet relay drone plane aloft for years over remote areas. But Facebook admits the drones might be too expensive for truly remote areas; the company is considering launching satellites instead to cover these areas. Of course, part of the problem is that the present generation of satellite phone satellites, like Iridiums’ fleet, do provide global Internet coverage but at a very steep price. [Update 2014/4/14 Google announced today that they had bought Titan Aerospace. This the autonomous drone maker that Facebook had been in negotiations to acquire. It looks like Facebook and Google got into a bidding war for this company, with Google ultimately winning. Instead, Facebook recently hired employees from a UK-based drone maker to join its Connectivity Lab, which will use drones, mesh networks, and … wait for it … laser beams to connect the world’s last billion people to the Internet. No word on whether Facebook Connectivity Lab plans to also use sharks with their laser beams and mesh networks.]
You may recall that part of the reason the flight’s final coordinates are a mystery is that, to cut costs, Malaysian Airlines did not subscribe to the full Inmarsat satellite service, which would have periodically transmitted full GPS coordinates to Inmarsat. Instead, Inmarsat only got the periodic, minimalist ‘handshake’ communicates, which the airplane and satellite kept alive to make it possible to transmit any data for which a paid subscription channel was available. Having better global satellite Internet options would made it much less expensive for the plane to transmit data continuously (including, as some have suggested, a larger chunk of the information currently stored on the black box.) This might make a fleet of Internet-connected sharks much less necessary.
Of course, there’s a reason that Google and Facebook are resorting to very advanced, experimental technologies like drones that stay aloft for years to make the Internet accessible to people in remote, developing nations. Some of it might be charity. But, mainly, pretty much every Internet-connected person that might be interested is already using Google and Facebook. So, to continue to fuel growth, they need to find new humans. These might come from remote areas. And, once, they run out of humans? Well, all those profile pictures of dogs on Facebook? Someday, they might really be dogs….
Rube Goldberg contraptions
But probably not sharks. Come to think of it, communication with sharks might be very difficult. They don’t seem to have much of a language of their own. And, putting sharks on the Internet is probably a very bad idea for the foreseeable future. It really is a Rube Goldberg concept suitable for a Bond or an Austin Powers movie. And both we, the original commentator, and Dr. Evil originally intended it as a joke.
Advanced communication skills of mammals
But you might be able to communicate with dolphins using wearables. You might be able to ask a dolphin if it’s seen a shark or a missing plane. They’re warm & fuzzy mammals, much friendlier to humans. They actually have a sophisticated language amongst themselves. They reportedly don’t like sharks. They even have sophisticated senses, like sonar, that even sharks don’t have. (Although dolphins cannot dive to extreme crushing depths at the bottom of the ocean where the flight is located, so UAVs will always be needed.)
Dolphins have already been taught simple sign language, and have there own highly advanced communication language among themselves. On at least one occasion, a dolphin was (with great difficulty) able to convincing parrot-mimic human communication (“Get out of the water!”) in an attempt to communicate with human scientists, although it is not clear if he knew what the words meant.
Analytics and Dolphin Talk
Great strides have been made in recent years with computer analysis of dolphin language. We have been able to show mathematically that their sounds encode sophisticated communications. We have even determined that dolphins each have a name that they use among themselves and respond to. We haven’t fully cracked the dolphin code yet.
Perhaps in the future we will crack the dolphin language code. Then, we could outfit a wearable computer to the dolphin that would let them speak to us remotely in their natural language, or some simplified version of it. We could ask them whether there are any sharks approaching populated beaches, or if they’re noticed any planes crashing into the water recently. If that’s not immediately possible, it should certainly be possible to train them to activate controls on a special wearable computer, similar to what is being done with some dogs. (Some of the applications for working dolphins are reportedly very sensitive, such as clearing mines. So it is possible something like this is already being done but not widely reportedly.)
No one knows you’re a dolphin?
Of course, as the old Far Side comic punch line goes, on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog. (Or a cat. Or a dolphin.) The Internet might not be just for cat photos. Some day, it might be for cats, dogs, and dolphins, too.
After all, some futurists think that dogs and cats will someday be connected to the Internet of Things. For this to happen on any appreciable scale is probably a far more distant future (and still more Dr. Evil-esque future) than the many more practical applications of the Internet of Things. It’s fun to think about in the meantime. It’s the Internet of Things version of posting up a cat photo. And wearable computers already exist for dogs. SQUIRREL!