In reading the short selection by Stephen Kern, I was appalled about the weakness in wireless telegraphy. While the Titanic was sinking, crewmen were making frantic distress calls in search for emergency aide. A ship nearby could have saved everyone onboard, however the crewmen on the Californian decided to call it a day ten minutes before the catastrophe. The weakness entails that the weakness in communication at the time was that it required active participation at all times. People had to be monitoring signals in order to become of any use in situations like this. Today we would have had emergency sirens/lights or other signs that would infer an emergency message was received without the need of active crewmen. Upon hearing the siren, crewmen would be instructed to view the distress calls and take immediate action.
In Susan J. Douglas’s selection about the early radio, I was amused by the “amateurs” who often did more harm than the intended goal of helping society. Often the amateurs would use the wireless technology to transmit false and deceitful information in order to arouse personal humor. This situation reminds me of hackers to make it their life duty to crack and hack computers just for personal laughs and glory. It was delightful to notice how licensing of the airwaves allowed amateur radios to become significant in major storms and accidents. The radio today is just as popular and strong as it ever was and will continue to be a significant instrument for communication and personal enjoyment.
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You brought to light a point I think is very important, especially within out context of ubicomp. The point is the interface factor, the Titantic is a prime example of this. The information (a difference that makes a difference), specifically the fact the ship was in distress was successfully transmitted but unseccessfully recieved, an err of the human intereface category. Today the same problem plagues our federal intelligence community. We have all the coolest toys, gadgets and technology but the simple fact remains the same. The load and volume of information coming in from all the various sources must be filtered through and paired down to digestable chunks. An individual still must interact with i.e. interface with the intelligence. So regardless of the pervasive nature of ubicomp, it still boils down to interface. The economy of interface has improved and I think thats one important aspect of ubicomp, the improvement of interface.
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