That a lot of Times Technology solves those problems before we really had a chance to think about whether the problems are really entirely problems or maybe theres something that were losing in the process as well. Maybe that thing that we solved also was beneficial to us in some ways. And so tonight, what were going to talk about, the way that technology has made our lives better, maybe it has taken something away from our lives. My name is jeff wise, as you have heard, im a science journalist and i recently have been writing a lot about mh370, a lot of people have been baffled by the case, because people say to me, if i lose my iphone, i can find that, how come we cant find this 200foot long plane with 239 people on board. How is that even possible . But before that, i was ive been very interested in the idea of being lost, it was a travel item originally. And i saw a lot of value in that sensation of being lost and so im on two parts of this question, and i think from our panelist, youll see kind of a divide here, are we in favor of getting lost or are we against it . So let me introduce the panel thats here with us tonight. Here we have wendy harmon, she is the director of Information Management and situation aal awareness for Disaster Services of the american red cross. And maybe she can tell us a little more about herself as we dive into this topic. Next is clarence or dell who is research scientist, alphabetically, im sure it stands for a lot. And martin post, he a veteran world traveller, wrote for many years for the travel column at the new york times, and hes an expert at getting lost everywhere. And he also in fact did an eightpart series for the times about specifically trying to get lost. So hes in favor of getting lost. Hes going to tell you how to do it. But anyway, so, maybe just to kick it because really people are fascinated about this topic, i dont want to monopolize the mike here, but getting lost, people say get lost, buddy, or, you know, lost at sea, its a terrible problem. Nobody wants to get lost. But there was kind of a positive aspect to it. You think of the chuck baker song, lets get lost, or lost horizons there,s a desire for a feeling of getting disconnected, to find yourself apart from the world youre normally connected to and feel obligated to. And in the last 120 years, say since the turn of the century, we find ourselves in a world in which were all, any adult is presumed to not only instant Communications Access to the whole world, but they know where they are, theyve got the gps right there in their pocket. And the authorities know where you are too, if you dial 911, they know where you are so they can come help you, so thats a great thing that you can get help wherever you are or wherever you need it. And here we open it up. And is there a problem in that . Have we lost something in that we no longer venture out into the world with this question looming in the back of our brain. Where am i . Am i going to be able to get back to where i started from . So maybe i could open this up and talk about some of the positive aspects of getting lost. How has so how do you help people who are lost . In what sort of situations . Well, part of the mission of the red cross is really to reconnect family to each other after a disaster as happened. Through the national rnc arm of the red cross, or here domestically, we have a whole system called safe and well, which after a disaster, we enkurj people to register themselves so friends and family can find them. How many of you know what google person finder is . Thats something that google came up with thats an entirely open system of checking and looking for people. Ours is kind of like a legacy system thats antiquated but has all these Safety Measures in it so you have to actually know lots of things about a person before you can find them. How would this affect you or me. A tsunami hits in new york, and people get swept out to sea, is that the kind of situation youre talking about. That and being unexpectedly displaced and not having been at work and a disaster happens and you end up at a shelter or some other location. And your cell phone doesnt work . Which often happens. Katrina is where it happened . Yes, and it happens in most significant disaster events where there are families that get separated from each other. Is this a convenience or is it life threatening . Its less about life threatening and more about much when youre feeling lost, you just want to reconnect with your family, so having the tools to be able to do that and i think honestly, it probably is more of a demand on is side of people looking for their lost people than it is the people who are lost. You know, i did research for an article about search and rescue, and 20 years ago, most search and rescue operations were initiated because someone hadnt shown up at the appointed time and place and their relatives or their friends called the search and rescue center and says joe blow wasnt here, can you go find him . Nowadays, most search and rescue operations are initiated by the person whos lost. They call up and say, come find me, im in a canyon somewhere, i cant figure out write am. And i mean this is and part of compounding this problem is that because people have this power, this immense power in their possibility, they will go off into the wilderness without having first looked at a map. So they kind of kind of overreliance. Overreliance, overconfidence. Maybe something you can talk about is the difference between information, like knowing that your phone is telling you to go north and then turn left after 300 yards, but to actually understand it, where you are, if you look at a map, you have to understand, okay, the lake is over here, the mountain is over here, i understand the environment. You dont have to have any understanding when youve got a phone. So being lost can take on a whole new meaning, because if youre lost on a map, at least you know what the map is. There was a case a few years back and this kind of thing has happened recurringly, where a couple got into their car, they wanted to go to vegas, they were in canada and they plugged in destination vegas and they said shortest route, instead of fastest route. They went on logging roads and they wound up in a canyon and the guy went off and died. I forgot to ask you more about your sort of background, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you do and how information and sure, sure. Actually i owe kind of what i do in part to wendy, but i have been at cna, safety and Security Team for about five years now so we do a lot of work on Disaster Response and preparedness issues, we do a lot of work for fema, doj and some state and local governments. Shortly after i got there in 2009, there was the haiti earthquake, that was the first time where it came into popular consciousness about the power of text messaging and these new technologies to aid folks of a disaster. So kind of since then, you know, i ran across, wendy had this crisis data coffnference at the red cross, it was the first time you saw the technology gists come together with the First Responders and you started loog at to the issues. Since then i have been interested looking at the intersection of that space on a couple of levels, one is in terms of emergency responders, like the people who are charged with finding us if we get lost. How are they taking to these new technologies, right . So theres, as you say, you might make a phone call, when youre lost, but disasters as well, they did some great work on, you know, people sending out tweets or facebook posts after a zarlt. And i know the first earthquake i actually experienced was in virginia a couple of years ago and you couldnt get any texts or anything out. And i actually didnt know anything about earthquakes. So i checked out the twitter feed. There was an earthquake in new york a couple of years ago and i was like what the heck was that. And a friend of mine 30 seconds ago had said earthquake. So in haiti, do people have cell phones at the density they have here . Definitely. I think you see them in the developing world, if you will, as not smart phones actually, but phones, penetration is probably be more than america, i would venture, not smart phones, though, so text messaging becomes a very good way for folks to communicate all types of information, in terms of connecting after a disaster. People are putting this information out there so a lot of the work that i have been doing is understanding how can we use this information to actually understand peoples behaviors better, but also understand kind of movements and how can Emergency Managers use that information to find people if you will after a disaster. Theres been some, i started to do some work on a whole host of contents with complications and research around that how can we use this data or crowd sourcing if you will for locating people in a disaster situation. We have a real life event here. I want to ask the audience, how many heard a screeching from their phone about 3 00 this afternoon. Yeah . And a buzzing. I guess it can manifest in different ways, but this is an example of what were talking about. This happened to me, i happened to have gotten any cell phone in los angeles 15 years ago, and i still have the area code 323. Yet my phone was telling me about flash flooding in this area. So clearly they knew where i was. I dont know how accurately. But this is a great benefit, potentially a little bit weird and scary. You know, talking on the phone a couple of days ago, i asked him, can they find if theyre expecting some kind of Natural Disaster trouble in a certain area, they can find everyone whos in that area . Youre saying yes . How accurate is that . Pretty accurate. I dont know all to the technical specs for doing it. But its all cell tower pings. So all the people that that cell tower is serving could get located. What about if they said everything with a cell phone in this campsite . I dont think so. As far as i know. Were talking about the incredible usefulness of saving lives and important things like that. But i do want to look at the nuances of this and the potential cost. Do you travel, do you have a smart phone in your pocket at all times when you travel . You were telling me you were traveling for fun and for work. Oh, yeah, who doesnt have a smart phone in their possibility all t pocket all the time. But theres two kinds of travel, i travel with my family on vacation and its practical to know how to get from point a to point b. We were at a pool party in suburban new jersey this weekend. And my wife and my kids wouldnt have appreciated it if i threw my cell phone out the window and tried to finding my way. We went out to ridgewood, is that the town . Yeah, ridgewood, but then theres the travel for travel stories, and specifically the travel stories at the time was the getting lost series, where i decided that after years of sort of intensive attention that i had paid to all these new technologies on my phone, on the internet, that had sort of trained me in becoming a very astute and capable research intended traveler, i was just higher than that stuff. And i kept thinking back to these great times earlier in my travels, when i was in my early 20s or when i was almost eight years old and i got lost in the Amusement Park in denmark rpgs when the world had seemed so much more were you terrify. Getting lost when youre 7 years old is terrifying, but theres also a moment where you learn what youre capable of. You learn how you react in a situation that youre absolutely unprepared for. And how what you do with those really determines the course of your life in some way, it shows you who you are, it teaches you hopefully that youre capable of dealing with the situation. Or you set out to intentionally get lost. Yes. What was the lostest that you got . Oh. Well i quickly realized that there were different ways of defining lostness. Lostness is quickly well sort of getting lost series, what i would do is pick a destination and i would go there with no hotel reservation, no plans, no contacts, no guide book, no map, no looking at my phone, at google maps, just show up and be there for a week or so and see what happens. Get off the plane and i really have no idea where im going to go or what im going to do. So what i realized, i would probably be getting lost on the basic level is that i have a really good sense of direction. I can look at the sun and know which direction im heading. Every man thinks they have a great sense of direction. But you really do . Its pretty good. The first place i went was tangier in morocco. Theres all these twisty turny alleyways with no signs, and you theoretically dont know where youre going, but as i walked through the medina, i realized, oh, its on a hill, and the hill slopes down toward the sea. If im going down hill im going towards the skae and if im going uphill, im going away from the sea. I kept trying to turn them off, to not think about where i was going. And one day, i met a young woman who was interning at this art center in tangier, and she wanted to take me to some far flung cafe. So all i did was talk to her and follow her. So i paid no attention. Completely under her care. You know, and that was great. I sort of almost was capable of not realizing where i was. Thats the key is not paying attention, thats how you get lost. I grew up in a town where i left the town when i was 16 years 80. All i knew about driving around town was sitting in the passengers seat. I new absolutely nothing about how to get around. And i think smart phones do something similarly. I want to ask you about your stuff, but i also want to ask wendy about, have you seen a downside in terms of Disaster Preparedness or emergency relief in terms of people being too dependent on their phones and lacking a kind of Situational Awareness . Sure. As a little bit of background about me, i started to develop the Location Program at the red cross so i sort of had a front row seat to all these changes that have gone on since 2006. 2006 was when you started . Was that myspace . Myspace and blogs. Yeah. So i actually am a professional stalker for the american red cross. I read, you mean, i used to read 5,000 plus conversations about the organization every single day so i have a really good sense of how people feel about it. Positively and negatively. But yeah, in that role, i was all about exploiting every single possibility for aiding people when theyre in an emergency situation to have more resilience or have coping mechanisms and built a whole Digital Volunteer Program where we actually invite the must be lick to get trained to actually provide emotional support people who are going through disaster situations so we tried to exploit the technology for the most positive reasons and now that im on the Disaster Program side, certainly our reservations arrange allowing not allowing, but like the trend of people could be oafly reliant on their smart phones for things as simple as a telephone number or how to get down the street. To people drop their cell phone in the water and they dont know how to call their wife . And also theres a shift away from calling 911 to what you should do if youre in an emergency situation, theres stories that if you go to an event and hear a facebook person talk, saying these two teenaged girls fell in one of those street well, sewer well things, maybe they were in there and they didnt want their parents to know. But they posted something on face kbook that would come and get them. If you have friends that would do that. They didnt call their friends . Yay. It was like a facebook posting, hey, if anyones reading this, come and get me. Did they do it as an event . I invite you i think to your point and you were even saying you tried to get rid of those queues when you were out, just the Technology Becomes so reliant that we dont know how to pull in those queues anymore. I did it myself when i was with my sister in North Carolina this weekend. And were driving to a restaurant and its only like five minutes from her place. She gets in her car and she punches in the gps coorder narn nants. So i think you become so relichblt on technology, that we just immunize ourselves from picking up on those clues. I dont know anybodys phone number by heart quite honestly anymore. You just go through the phone. But i think, kind of how that ties back to these emergency situations, the article that wendy sent to us, you mentioned in theory, we can call 911 from our cell phones and they can locate us. But the article was talking got in a d. C. Apparently upwards of 90 of the calling actually dont have accurate locations, so youre spending this time on the phone in a disstressed situation where the operators havent asked you well where are you located . Is it the fault of the system or the phones . The carrier is supposed to provide this information right now. Is this just checking the cell phone try angulation or theres a gps chip in the phone. A thing called stage two which is the gps information. I guess its failing more frequently than when you buy a new phone, ever since some year recently, your phone is supposed to have this capability, but its the system thats failing or the phone . It depends on how you define system or phone. So thats one of the things the 911 dispatchers, a Washington Post arabticle that was publisd last week, having a harder time, having increased instances of ptsd because they have to be on the phone with people who die because the emergenciy vehicle s searching around for them, because its not using a cell phone to call 911, its not as location accurate . Are people not aware of where they are . All they know is they took a left . Theres a language barrier, if you dont speak establish and the operator only speaks english, you cant tell where you r if youre calling a land line, its automatically attached to a physical address. So those are just some of the struggles that were having. Also we were talking earlier, about the fact that the media, theres a new start up, and probably lots of them called geophelia. You cannot tell people where you are. Which is a draw back for us when were looking for valuable actionable information. So some companies have come up with ways to capture, so you can actually draw a circle around the area that youre looking at and trying to finding fall information of people affected in that zone and we were going to try it out and they were saying, actually only 3 of people or Something Like that at that time have geo location turned on. So youre getting 3 and maybe you advocate that everybody turns on