Facebook Drones Hardly New Idea

I had to chuckle when I read about Facebook’s new venture.  Last week Facebook announced that it had successfully conducted the first test flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone, a small-scale model, was used to test the characteristics of a larger vehicle.  The proposed solar-powered drones with a wingspan of a commercial 737 aircraft, would fly for months or even years at about 80,000 ft.  If proven viable, the technology would provide affordable and reliable internet access to millions now unserved, especially in third world countries.  Google, Boeing and others have been looking at similar uses of high altitude drones.

The big benefit of such a system is that radio signals from a single aircraft flying so high can cover a tremendous area back on earth.  Using cellular technology to cover that same area would require hundreds or even thousands of cell towers, each requiring electric power and some hard-wired or radio connection back to the internet backbone. 

I had to laugh at the reports claiming this idea was so innovative because the concept and a working system, using basically the same components, was in operation right here in the tristate beginning in the 1960s. 

Dubbed MPATI (Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction) the initiative provided broadcasts of educational TV programs to schools unserved by a terrestrial station.  To accomplish this, the programs were broadcast from two DC6 aircrafts flying in a figure eight pattern about 25,000 ft. above Muncie, Indiana.  The planes, based at Purdue University, each had equipment on board capable of transmitting to an area of about 500 miles in diameter.  The local PBS station, CET, was a major supplier of programming for MPATI which operated from 1961 thru 1968.

Earlier experiments of this system were conducted by CBS.  The commercial network was investigating a way to provide pay TV and movies to viewers in the New York area.  Think of it as an HBO before satellites and modern cable.

Obviously the technology has improved exponentially over the 1960’s experiments conducted right here in our backyard.  But it does point out that innovation and creativity did not begin with the digital age.

Faster Not Always Better

Social networking and instantaneous and continuous news reporting have become so much a part of the landscape that even the most insignificant and trivial happenings get reported worldwide as important breaking news. Be it the police chasing a DUI driver on a Hollywood freeway or a robbery of a McDonalds in Fargo, we see it live on TV and on the Internet. For sure there are important news items that we need to know in a timely manner, but the ease of worldwide instantaneous distribution has provided proof that the old adage “Engage Brain Before Opening Mouth.” is truer now than ever before.

In the past since, there was a delay from the time a story came to light and the time it was reported on air or in print, there was most often sufficient time for getting the facts. Today because of the ravenous appetite of the 24/7 news services there is pressure to release a story as quickly as possible and fill in the details later.

Just recently there was a news report circulating on the Internet that Samsung, a major electronics manufacturer, was installing on their new line of laptop computers a software program that captured and transmitted back to Samsung all of the keystrokes made on that machine by the user. This type of software has been used by hackers to gather personal information from unsuspecting users. The nefarious software usually gets into a computer that has weak or non existent virus protection. For Samsung to have been accused of installing this software in the computers they were manufacturing and selling was really news. It was really bad news for Samsung as spying on customers could be devastating and not really conducive for increasing sales or improving a corporate image.

This report made the rounds on the Internet and was picked up by many individuals and forwarded in tweets and Facebook postings. As the saying goes, “It went viral.” All of this took only minutes to circulate. Within hours Samsung released an explanation that the company had not installed this spyware and that it was a very popular virus scanning program from GFI, a company with no affiliation with Samsung, that was indicating a “false positive” warning. GFI admitted this error in short order.

In the past this story would have never been released in the first place as the explanation would have been available before the newspaper article was printed or the TV and Radio news report produced. Not so in the Internet age.

Print vs. Online a Non Issue

It is good to see the Harrison Press providing more and more content on line. For sure this is where many of us will eventually look to find our news and views rather than from the traditional printed versions. If you are reading this column in the print edition of the Harrison Press you are already part of a shrinking minority of hard copy newspaper readers. It is true that the weekly or community newspapers seem to have been able to hold on to more print subscribers than their big brother daily counterparts but the trends indicate that this phenomenon will be short lived.

Some may lament the passing of the newsprint method of reporting the happenings of daily life. For many of us who grew up reading the newspaper, there certainly is a pleasant tactile response that we have while holding in our hands a newspaper or book. Whether that response is innate or learned is debatable.

Observing our younger generation can give us some hints on what the future holds not only for the printed word but for all media. Ask almost anyone under 35 if they regularly read a printed newspaper or watch TV programs in real time on the broadcast TV or on the cable/satellite channels. More often than not the answer will be no. It is not that they are not interested in current events and are unaware of what is happening around their town or the world. For sure they do enjoy entertainment. In most instances they are informed and conversant. They just get their information and entertainment in different ways.

Instead of half asleep saunter down the driveway before the first cup of morning coffee to retrieve the print edition of the newspaper, the “30 somethings” log on to a news web site or check Twitter and Facebook. Often the content on these sites are provided by the very newspapers they eschew. The Enquirer has Cincinnati.com and most premiere newspapers like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal have very popular online editions. I read both on my computer and smart phone. The Kindle and other eReaders offer electronic versions of several daily newspapers.

For breaking news a printed newspaper can’t compete with an electronic edition. It was almost 24 hours after it happened that the printed edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer was able to report on the recent devastating earthquake in Japan. By then most people had consumed hours of video reports and analysis. Much was from the web.

It is not only the newspaper industry that is undergoing change. TV, both broadcast and cable are losing viewers to video services provided on the Internet. There is an increasing amount of first run programming available on line and on demand. “Appointment” viewing, that is watching a program when it is broadcast, is becoming less and less prevalent among all age groups. Among the 25 to 35 year old demographic regular TV viewing is the exception rather than the rule.

Some worry about these trends. Others, me included, feel that we should not concentrate on how we get information and entertainment as much as the quality and reliability of the information and entertainment we get.

Social Media & Internet Serious Players

If you read this column regularly you know that I often take issue with new gadgets or technologies that seem to spring more from the fertile minds of engineers and computer programmers than from real needs of regular human beings. The current situation in Egypt, Tunisia and some other mid-eastern countries has demonstrated clearly that the technologies that many of us might use for some trivial pursuits in our daily lives are helping to change the geopolitical landscape.

Social networking, webcams and mobile phones have enabled direct and almost instantaneous communication among political activists. These same technologies have opened a window from which the world can watch what was happening in real time in public squares and streets from Alexandria to Tunis. Of course the major news operations, CNN, BBC and others, had people on the ground reporting with their “Special Reports.” Their network’s promo announcements looked more like ads for a new car than for a news report of worldwide significance. The real story was not originating from the major media; in many cases it was the mobile phone video or the Facebook and Twitter exchanges that gave us the real picture.

Early on it was interesting to see how those in charge were quick to try to shut down the Internet and mobile phone networks. With the proliferation of satellite phones and other long range technologies, this was futile. The days of any real control of the distribution of information are gone. Since banking, utility networks, and even traffic lights and emergency services in any modern city all require the Internet, turning it off for any length of time is not an option. Blocking certain services like Facebook and Twitter are also futile as a high school age hacker will soon navigate around these blocks.

This “brave new world” of instantaneous communication does not come without a serious negative. Seeing should not always be believing. Digital manipulation of images and video can be done on a laptop in seconds and transmitted to the world as “truth.”

We should not be too quick to embrace as the “whole truth” information coming directly from the citizen journalists on the streets of Cairo without also reviewing the more traditional reporting. I for one would like to have the critical eyes of trusted media along with the unfiltered steams of Twitter and Facebook.