Dodging Bullets

The business of America is business.

I’ve always been impressed with how Americans can “monetize” (find a way to convert something into money) pretty much anything. Like Facebook: it doesn’t charge you to be a member; and yet they make money. The same with Google’s searches.

But ok, those are companies. Funded by venture capitalists who would demand a return on investment. So it’s sort of expected that they find a way to make money, directly or indirectly, hundreds of dollars at every transaction (like Apple) or a few cents at a time (like Google).

But the above wouldn’t explain the US army’s repeated tendency to commercialize things done or built for military purposes. Like the Internet. And the Hummer. It can only be explained by the America’s single minded devotion to making money.

Like take this latest tech to move from the US army to civilian use: finding the direction of gunfire. Its use in war is self-explanatory. And in a country where almost every lunatic has a gun and homicidal tendencies to do mass killings, this would obviously be useful to both innocent bystanders and law enforcement.

Ok, so you are sold on its usefulness. But how does it work? It uses multiple inputs: the flash of gunfire (observed via camera), microphones to hear the whizzes of bullets flying, and good old triangulation techniques. Of course, you still need nodes for triangulation, which is why the first set of users are more likely to be cops rather than civilians.

But if enough police systems build/buy the infrastructure, the next step, of course, would be to write an app for the smartphone which could connect to the cops’ repository to get information in real time while shots are still being fired! Sound like science fiction? A team at Vanderbilt already developed a new app and hardware module for Android just for this purpose.

Oh, you did hear the news about smartphones outselling dumbphones, er, feature phones, all over the world, didn’t you? Which would make this kind of system available globally sooner rather than later, wouldn’t you say?

Welcome to the Matrix, Neo. It’s time to dodge bullets!