DailyPost 817
TECHNOLOGIES DON’T WAIT
Technology is like a genie gone out of the bottle which cannot be put back. With the onset of the digital age, the world is experiencing this with unenviable regularity. To understand the technology and react to it cannot be an unending task. Timelines and milestones should have to become a part of law / policy / enforcement mechanism and the counter technology to maintain the system should be equally effective. This has not happened and we are getting onto unknown roller coaster rides in lots of emerging technology areas. Cyber security is big overall umbrella we have to sort out. Blockchain technology manifested by bitcoin and now drones are in for a jungle growth hampering what we have carefully created and cherished.
While we slowly get ready for the drone age with baby steeps, their negative potential in full display. We have not been able to to investigate the truth in any of the two famous drone incidents of the year. One is still unfolding in a way. We have to develop the capability of cracking these cases and it happen technologically. On Aug 4th 2018, two drones detonated explosives near the venue where Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela was addressing Bolivarian National Guard. The Govt claims that it was a targeted attempt to assassinate the President. The cause and the intention are yet to be established.
In a scarier scenario, at the end of a nearly concluded no flight situation for two days, London’s Gatwick Airport reopened this morning for limited operations after drone scare. The second busiest airport in UK had to stop operations after multiple sightings of drones over the airports runway. In between it was opened and closed again within 45 mins because of drone sighting again. More than 120,000 passengers affected by cancellation of 700+flights. The perpetrators still remain at large. A deliberate act for sure it puts passengers at immense risk and the Govt and the law enforcement cutting an extremely sorry figure. ”We are continuing to search for operators,” is all what the Sussex has to say.
Our handling of emerging technologies the world over crypto currency to social media to drones drives home a point that our responses are nowhere close to the gigantic technological problems thrown on our face. Having a will and then putting the act together would be the beginning. Handling one emerging technology successfully would help create governance, enforcement and technical expertise to handle other technologies as well. Learning & delivery have got enmeshed.
UNREGULATED DRONES ARE IMPENDING DISASTERS.
Sanjay Sahay