Gates Foundation Funds ‘Anti-Vaccine Surveillance and Alert System’ and ‘On-Demand Vaccine Delivery via Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’
August 29th, 2012Via: TechNet21:
An anti-vaccine surveillance and alert system
Seth Kalichman of the http://www.uconn.edu/ in the USA will establish an Internet-based global monitoring and rapid alert system for finding, analysing, and counteracting communication campaigns containing misinformation regarding vaccines to support global immunization efforts.
…
On-demand vaccine delivery via low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles
George Barbastathis of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in the USA will lead a team to develop unmanned aerial vehicles that can be deployed by health care workers via cell phones to swiftly transport vaccines to rural locations and alleviate last-mile delivery problems and improve cost, quality, and coverage of vaccine supplies.
Research Credit: noguru
“unmanned aerial vehicles that can be deployed… via cell phones to swiftly transport vaccines to rural locations…”
This is so stupid, I don’t even know where to begin.
Setting aside concerns about vaccination, the idea of using drones to deliver vaccines is a case of laughable techno-overkill. What jackass thinks this is a good idea?
I remember in the 90s, while working for an Internet company, hearing my peers talk in awed voices about the first site to allow you to order pizza over the Internet, and how utterly cool it was. “Really? Wow. Um, awesome. Me, I just, you know, pick up the phone. Seems to work…”
I also remember returning from a trip to India in 2000, and talking about seeing street children in Bihar playing Atari Space Invaders with stolen electricity while sitting inside a large cardboard box. It was such a surreal tableau, my hair literally stood on end. Relating that scene to smug Silicon Valley friends a couple months later, they confidently predicted that the glorious Internet revolution would continue “…until all those kids you saw in India have Cisco routers.”
“Cisco routers? But… but they don’t even have running water. They don’t even have *shoes*…”
About a year later came the Dot Com Crash.
Hubris before a fall? Sure felt that way.
As for drone delivery services… You can deliver a lot of goods the last mile using mountain bike, mounted animal, canoe, even on foot. Those methods:
-work fine
-generally don’t fail when it’s: too humid; too dark; raining/sleeting/snowing
– don’t require batteries
– don’t require a multi-million dollar development effort
Why are people so “look, shiny!” when it comes to technology? Our technophilia just seems so immature and silly.
I’m not saying there aren’t situations in which a delivery drone would be your only delivery option, but they’re truly rare.
Maybe I’ve just been reading too much Neil Postman and Lewis Mumford… “Hey, you darn techies!” “Get off mah lawn!”
😉