Missing flight 370: Wither technology?

Honestly, this event sounds like an embarrassment to the worlds of aerospace engineering and information and communication technology (ICT). Man worked on the moon more than fifty years ago, we are trying out aircraft systems that reach any two points on the surface of the earth under one hour, robots from several countries are in […]

Honestly, this event sounds like an embarrassment to the worlds of aerospace engineering and information and communication technology (ICT). Man worked on the moon more than fifty years ago, we are trying out aircraft systems that reach any two points on the surface of the earth under one hour, robots from several countries are in space carrying out experiments and explorations, GPS technologies allow us to send unmanned vehicles across the globe with precise targeting, we can see in the dark, we can stream videos for hours on end, we can use satellites to locate the position of an object anywhere on earth or in space, or isn’t it the case that we can locate our iPhones in minutes if they should get lost? Or, are airlines not routinely using satellites to provide Wi-Fi for their passengers? Is it not said that satellites could read our automobile license plates from space? And so on. So, what is the matter with Flight 370 – why can’t we tell the coordinates of the “black” box minutes after we had decided the plane was lost? Are we in a tech slumber or what? Technically speaking, something doesn’t sound right.
I personally feel a sense of awkwardness, for I have spent a better part of my twenty six years in academia and industry carrying out truly advanced research on cutting-edge aspects of aerospace engineering, and, obviously, ICT is occupying a significant role in my current life, wherein I leverage all the computer knowledge I have continuously been acquiring since my second year in college, back in 1976. So, with these relevant backgrounds (aerospace engineering and ICT), why couldn’t I easily convince my cousin that we were able to instantly locate Flight 370? I am sure my daughter, who is also an aerospace engineer and an aircraft designer by profession, also feels the same sense of awkwardness about the situation. Perhaps, my daughter and I would have needed to be regulatory agencies in order to be helpful!
I can tell you, tongue-in-cheek, of course, that the technology is available to locate Flight 370, only that the technology has not been adopted! Moreover, it could be that we are seeing capitalism at its worst. Jad Mouawad, Christopher Drew, and Nicola Clarkmarch in the 20 March 2014 issue of New York Times (NYT) put it thus: “The global airline industry had sophisticated tools in hand to follow planes in real time and stream data from their flight recorders. But for a variety of reasons, mostly involving cost and how infrequently planes crash, neither the airlines nor their regulators adopted them.” The journalists also pointed out: “Military airplanes and helicopters used in offshore exploration have flight-data recorders that can eject with a parachute in a crash. They emit a satellite signal that immediately transmits the aircraft’s identity and location. But adding an ejection system on a commercial jet would require expensive redesign.”
A blogger on the NYT article doesn’t buy the cost argument: “Finally the question everyone has been asking. GPS can track my car within a matter of feet. Verizon can find my phone in China. And we cannot find a plane with hundreds of passengers on it because it costs too much? Are you kidding me! The airlines certainly know how to raise fares while giving us 2 inches less space for our feet but they cannot afford a GPS system that would track a missing 777.” Another blogger agrees: “It’s hard to believe that it should be so very expensive that tracking won’t be done. I don’t believe it. I predict that when the dust settles, there will be a cost effective way to track all planes.” Another blogger offered this bit of advice: “If data bandwidth is an issue, then why not start streaming CVR/FDR (cockpit voice recorder/flight data recorder) data only if systems detect any of a number of flight anomalies, such as course diversions, severe altitude changes, unexpected velocity changes, etc. This is not rocket science, though maybe close to it, nonetheless eminently doable. Am still rather surprised, bemused, and perplexed that 13 years after 9/11, transponders can be turned off more easily than my cell phone.”
The current event also brings to focus the issue of technology priorities. We have been let down by the absence and/or deployment of relevant tech before.  Remember the Indonesia Tsunami devastation of 2004, or the manner in which Hurricane Katrina humbled the U.S. in 2005, and Hurricane Sandy did a number on millions of U.S. residents in 2012, making many of us homeless for weeks on end? Wither technology in all of these events?
It’s clear that many of today’s new technologies are of a different kind. For example, the amount of money that Facebook paid for WhatsApp could probably have paid for a significant portion of the research needed to solve some of life’s most catastrophic problems. So, do we have the right technology priorities? Many of the (Internet) technology companies are based on fairly simple, sometimes ordinary, skills; yet they rake in scores of billions of dollars. In fact, I learnt that the developer of WhatsApp couldn’t even pass college Mathematics! Obviously, Internet technologies in general are god-sent, but, per se, they have not yet helped us solve some of the difficult human problems.
The bottom line in this article is that the technology to trace Flight 370 is available, only that it has not been adopted! It seems as if we are seeing capitalism at its worst!