The Borg Are Waiting...Please Turn off and Stow all Electronic Devices

Public outcry over the requirement to shut off and stow our electronic devices during air travel seems to be reaching a fever pitch. On November 27 an article in the Technology section of the New York Times by Nick Bilton headlined, “Disruptions: Fliers Must Turn Off Devices but It’s Not Clear Why” hit the street. On 6 December the high profile actor Alec Baldwin created a sensation when he was thrown off an American Airlines flight for apparently refusing to unplug from from his game of “Words with Friends”.

In his article Bilton argues that it’s not clear how not turning off our electronic devices poses a safety of flight issue and that the time has come for these rules to change. He works some math to show that many travelers leave their devices on (intentionally or otherwise) and since we have not seen a catastrophic incident as a result, surely these devices can’t be disrupting to a planes electronics. His math works out to 11 million air travelers who have left their devices on over the last four years and since we haven’t seen a related incident it must be fine to leave our electronics on.

Many of us feel the affront to our personal freedom when we are asked to unplug. That disruption and growing sense of violation is on the rise in our society. In those with an over stuffed sense of entitlement the violation has been more severe and has manifested itself in the high profile public incidents that make the news. Regardless of the safety threat to air travel, is this growing sense of loss something greater?  Do we simply feel like our rights are being violated or do we sense something deeper? Is our evolutionary clock ticking?  Is that longing to be connected and remained connected some of the first vestiges of our collective emotions? Is it the hidden force of evolution that one day, many futures from now, will herald in us a real pain felt in our central nervous system as when neurons are forcefully severed from our physical bodies today? I think so...but clearly that day is still a long way off...but these very first emotions are  felt and cannot be denied.

But before that day we still have a growing problem to address. Should we get upset when we are disconnected during air travel?  Is the discomfort of the emotional pangs of being cut from the grid too high? Is the freedom we are forced to give up versus the added safety margin as Bilton suggests, simply too high?Many of these geniuses, Bilton and Baldwin included, are doing the risk vs freedom in their head and coming up with the answer that for them, the risk is simply not worth the inconvenience of powering down. This particular math is hidden the statistics unfortunately Bilton did the wrong math. Whereas I do not believe the FAA or the various airlines who restrict the use of electronic devices (with the exception of cell phones which they must) have done the math  it turns out that the math will continue to change over time. The radiation that electronic devices output in digital form vs analogue is far less than then it was in the old days. Although the number of users has increased considerably. I would argue more than 1% of people inadvertently leave their electronics on. The number is much higher than Bilton’s number yet still we have progressed without incident due to a cellphone or iPad intefering with  aircraft electronics.

However, Bilton and Baldwin’s desire to leave their devices on is not all about aircraft interference, at least not at the current levels and their relation to aircraft electronics. The rules are about living in a civil, as well as safe, orderly society along with the potential impact on the greater good. No where other than in air travel are we thrown together so close and must cooperate for such  good. We all submit to may indignities, inconveniences, discomfort so that we may reach our destination in one piece. The outrage may simply be a reaction to the last vestiges of personal freedom that are being stripped away when we are being told to unplug from the grid...same as we submit to searches and pat downs.

Beyond the combined potential disruption of 200 passengers each with cell phones and iPads all leaving them on...several hundred electronics devices, all concentrated inside an aluminum tube could produce effects that simply are unknown. Whereas all this interference may, in the end, not interrupt the aircraft electronics, it is a well known fact that 200 devices reaching out the closest cell tower simultaneously, will indeed cause cellular disruption. And it’s not just the closest cell tower, from 35,000 feet in the sky a large number of cell towers are in view...up to 200. As the each cell phone leaves and enters a new coverage area it sends out an inquiry, regardless if the phone is in use, only if it is switched on. The quick math shows that 200 phones reaching out to 200 towers can create quite a busy network. Even if you don’t use your cell phone in flight, and it remains on, your phone will be continuously entering a new coverage area. If you leave your phone on expect your battery to be dead at the end of a coast to coast flight even if you never use it. This figure tries to explain the relationship.

In addition to these 40,000 disruptions (keep in mind that is in one location and the location is changing continuously) using our devices reduces our attention that may be required during take off and landing. If you have your phone to your ear or your headphones on playing focused on your iPad how will you hear the flight attendants instructions in an emergency?

Also, consider the hard plastic, aluminum, and glass will also become lethal projectiles flying around during an landing incident.

Let’s not forget the important safety briefing at the start of the flight. This alone can compel the airlines to tell passangers to sit down and sit up, shut down and shut up, and pay close attention.

Finally, the mere annoyance to other passengers (noise abatement) for which the airlines must be able to reduce if only to increase the pleasant flight environment for us all.

For all these reasons, with the jamming of cell phone towers being number one in my book, the real culprit here is lack of education of the flight crew. When a flight attendant is asked why the devices must be powered down they should be able to give the complete and correct answer...not just that “the FAA regulations require us to do it”. A trained flight crew should be able to give the extended answer above. If they gave this answer I don’t think another question would be raised.  In some cases I don't think the flight attendants even agree or at least they are soft on the requirement and therefore people are let alone to get away with whatever they can. If they knew all the reasons perhaps they wouldn't be so soft on enforcement.   Baldwin seems like one of those types who might be used to getting away with things...regardless if he might believe himself to be a "American Treasure" which he might be.  Perhaps some flight attendant's haven't confronted him previously.

In the end, however, without this evolutionary hiccup our continued assimilation into the collective as I've reported previously, would have gone unnoticed. I for one, am glad these warning signals show up. I will be disconnected from the grid, not only on air travel, but when I simply don’t need to be.  I'm not ready to be assimilated.

Assimilation Has Begun

I’ve been a lifelong fan of Star Trek. When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out I was really hooked. Whereas the former was full of leadership anecdotes, and the exploits of one each, Captain James T. Kirk, the latter explored more explicit ramifications of life in space, technology, and our future trek through the galaxy albeit with the full effect of a perfect earth like gravitational pull. Perhaps the greatest contribution of TNG to SciFi and forward thinking futurists who have trouble seeing beyond the coming technology singularity is the concept of the Borg. The Borg didn’t firmly take hold of the Trekie culture until the release of the 8th motion picture of the Star Trek franchise and the first with the cast of TNG. The movie was “Star Trek: First Contact”. Who doesn’t remember the grim face of the new hero, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, as the Borg began their assimilation of his ship and crew? Finally he agrees to sacrifice the Enterprise in order to destroy them.

Maybe there is an advanced cyber-borg based civilization somewhere out beyond the reaches of the galaxy waiting for the day when we begin colonization of the planets, only to have them sweep down and assimilate us into their collective…or maybe they are already here.

I signed up with Google Voice about six months ago. I really have been jazzed by the technology which allows me to check my voice messages on my cell phone from my computer at work. Cell phones are not permitted in my office so I either have to take time to walk out to my car to check my messages, or I have to dial voice mail every few hours from my office phone. Neither option is very convenient. What is nifty and fast is getting an email with a transcribed text of the voice message someone has left on my cell phone directly into my inbox. Google Voice enables this to happen. Since I’ve toyed with the idea of buying voice recognition software so I could dictate messages and turn them into memos for the past couple of years, gaining access to the power of Google and the software they are using the drive the translation, for free, is staggering. So I signed up and as of today, I’ve called to check my voice mail messages approximately two times in the last six months. That bought back a significant part of my life and I no longer worry about missing an important message on my cell phone. Now this is not to say that the quality of the translation is all that good, in fact it’s not that good at all. But it’s sufficient to understand the nature of the message and to gauge its level of importance. My next call will be to take action on the message, not to call to check my voice mail.

As the last few months rolled by I seem to be doing an impromptu test of the quality of the voice to text translations. It’s a very interesting to see some of the messages that result. Some weird words can be created, and sometimes those words could be embarrassing to the individual who left them. I have noticed which of my friends tend to speak very clearly with not much of an accent. My friend from Arizona for instance gets translated with great accuracy. My neighbor from Brooklyn New York, however, is barely legible. One interesting result is that digits seem to be at or near 100%. Or I haven’t detected an error so far, even with my neighbor’s accent. And that I find very interesting.

Now I will tell you about the most interesting test of all. Yesterday my cable went out. I called the cable company to report the outage. Through an automated menu of options I was directed to further options and then advised that at my location they already knew about the outage and they were working to correct the problem. Then I was given the option for a call-back when they believed the problem was resolved. I missed the call-back when it came in so naturally Google Voice picked up and recorded the message from the cable company. I didn’t think about it at the time but the call-back itself was a computer generated message. A machine was generating a voice which was being recorded by another machine and then translated into a text message which was sent to my email. The machine voice nailed it. The scary translation accuracy of the computer generated voice was 97.25%.

Apparently I can now officially communicate with an artificial language more accurately then I can a real human voice. It's not scary in the sense that computers can talk better than us -- it's scary because the digital signal that represents the word "satisfaction" has been copied and pasted. Meaning the word “satisfaction” now has a digital signal. It’s sealed in stone. It’s permanent. The digital signature should, in theory, never change. Language as we know it, along with its unique role in human development will soon begin to stagnate. It will not change, and we humans will move toward the standard. Language will cease to evolve. As language technology propagates and becomes ubiquitous, it is not the computers that will begin talking like us; it is us that will begin talking like computers.

For instance, unwitting of what I was doing, I've already instructed some friends to speak more clearly when leaving a voice mail -- those from accent free zones already have voices that are translated accurately and need not change yet. And I do it too and have done so for some time. When face to face with a telephone menu with voice recognition, I try to speak more clearly, because I’ve already learned the frustration that will result if the call fails, so I move towards them. We are being assimilated. It works like this. First we will lose our accents, then we will speak in crystal clear monotone, then we will have chips imbedded in our head...isn’t that the Borg. The very idea that artificial intelligence is about making artificial things more like us is dead wrong. We will be getting closer to them. We have the biological ability to evolve, not them. They will not become human they will strip humanity from us. They will not turn into us and one day gain a soul. We will turn into them and one day be forced to lose ours. It seems that the Borg is already here and assimilation has already begun. Are you excited or scared?