November 5, 2012 Hurricane Sandy Showed How Useless Smartphones Can Be

Hurricane Sandy slammed into the east coast of the United States and brought widespread damage and death along with it. Millions impacted and in this age of global interconnectivity the people in the storm were cut off from the rest of the world.

Most if not everyone had a mobile phone and/or device, computers, laptops at the ready. However, those are not useful when the power goes out. Cell service is spotty at best or not available when the cell towers are damaged or overloaded. Your home Internet is down when your home is underwater, the power grid is shut down, or your local Internet Service Provider loses their connections.

In the world of all this cool, powerful technology was exposed to how vulnerable they can be. That brings us to my point. As I was watching the coverage I saw a White House statement that basically told the victims should check a website to get all the emergency information. That's it. Go back to my statements and see how absurd that strategy is. In the event of widespread destruction, like a natural disaster, the oldest and simplest technology is actually the most effective and efficient. Radio.

No where did I see any official tell people to turn on their radios for a broadcast of information and instructions. Radios are cheap, battery powered and the broadcast capability is very robust for emergency responders and governments to get information out.

Hurricane Sandy should bring this issue up about our technology adoptions and why we are moving away from a life saving capability that is now days pennies to install. I look at my iPhone and have always wondered why there isn't a terrestrial radio antenna in it. I am not talking about a Radio app that requires the Internet, but an antenna that I can tune FM frequencies with. That way if I am ever in a Hurricane Sandy, I may not be able to access the Internet from my phone, but I will still be able to receive information from the outside world no matter the state of the cellular infrastructure. This is a gap but I am not sure if the phone makers will ever address it.

If you think about the real world applications and need that you might need to have a radio tuner on your smart device it starts to make sense. There will be another event in the future, perhaps an earthquake, that will sever smartphone users from the outside world.

The Internet is global, but locally the infrastructures are fragile and without the Internet or cell towers smartphones are paperweights. I can assure you that outside of an EMP event, you can tune a radio station in from pretty much anywhere.

End of line.

Posted in: Android,Apple Inc,News,Technology