Sight Unseen by Budd Hopkins

Author:Budd Hopkins [Hopkins, Budd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780743418652
Barnesnoble:
Published: 2011-05-16T13:58:46+00:00

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S I G H T U N S E E N

demand a more productive old age by keeping alert, active, and safe with technology-assisted devices.

In Oatfield, Bill Reed has designed the country’s first wired, totally monitored, remote-controlled facility for frail, fumbling grannies and grandpas. Here the precise location, activity, and even memory lapse of every resident—caregivers, family members, and patients alike—is monitored and recorded twenty-four hours a day. A small badge attached to each person’s clothing contains infrared and radio-frequency locator chips and an emergency call button. These emit tracking signals, which are constantly transmitted to the local-area network. When a resident falls, she can press a button on the badge, which promptly displays her name and location on computers throughout the facility. If the alarm (a human voice continuously muttering,

“Uh-oh”) isn’t answered within five minutes, the system floods the e-mail boxes on supervisors’ cell phones. Inside and outside of Oatfield the patients are monitored on video cameras, and tripped-beam sen-The sensing unit that a technician is attaching to this steer records motion and other physiological data that enable scientists to determine how much time the animal spends grazing each day. (Photo courtesy of the Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

Vulnerable in a Thousand Ways

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sors alarm the staff if a patient wanders off the grounds. By 2003 the Matshita company plans to offer these facilities toilet seats that detect and transmit vital signs. Such monitors are already in every Oatfield senior’s bedroom, a technological component of the bed itself. At this point, let’s draw the curtain and move on. There are probably some things you and I don’t mind waiting to know about.

Ironically, these residents have, in effect, retained their freedom by surrendering it to Oatfield’s tracking system. Unlike most nursing homes, the Oatfield residents can walk outside unassisted, cook their own meals in the kitchen, maintain private living units, and entertain guests with dignity. Their touch-screen computers can even save them from the embarrassment of short-term memory loss by reminding them of a visiting grandchild’s name or, on a certain date, display a memo to “Call Steve.” Uh, who’s Steve? The programmable computer will show the elder a photo of Steve and information that will fill in the blanks: who, where, and why Steve is to be called.16

Tracking Gorillas on Your Desktop

If wandering, forgetful elders can be tracked so thoroughly, monitoring mountain gorillas in central African jungles might seem like an unsolvable nightmare for the scientist: there is malaria, the snipers, and the snakes. A typical trek into Rwanda, home to about half of the remaining six hundred mountain gorillas, requires a small army of local guides, machete-carrying trackers, and armed soldiers. But a newly developed technology is just beginning to allow scientists to study the endangered species from desktops rather than treetops.

Primatologists at Georgia Tech and software engineers have teamed up with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to develop a geographic information system (GIS). From Rwanda, GIS data is sent to Georgia Tech by e-mail and CD-ROM.

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