Remotely programming a cardiac pacer or defibrillator

soum — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:57:33 +0000

It is not important to ask ‘when’ the first heart device will be hacked. As is always with any innovation, universal acceptance happens sooner rather than later, however controversial it might be.A more interesting discussion is — what happens if the heart devices allowing open access. What is it that changes?

As with every change, the outcome is at the minimum a duality and everything in between. If the at least, the opposite poles can be identified (at any particular instant — this is important), then it allows us to break down the problem into simpler blocks.

As an example — if a hundred cellphones are distributed in a village in Ethiopia — the two possible outcomes could be:a) A hyper-connected village, and a range of services / economic changes that emerge as a consequence.b) the cellphones are never used for productivity at all — they are used a jewelries instead.

The actual outcome would be a combination of the above opposites, of course.In that sense, if I try and analyze the outcome of an innovation such as a heart device with open api —

positive: a range of middle layer services that promote life — such as: heart beat based art creator, romance analyzer (does her heart beat faster when she’s around me?), stress analyzer (during war?), longer life expectancy, music which modifies according to the heart rate (different music during sleep and jogging), better monitoring of food quality…. there is literally no end.
negative: a range of possibilities that destroy life — such as: freaky weapons of mass destruction, employee exhaustion monitoring, mass scale deaths due to machine failures…

By tomorrow morning, I will think of fifty more possibilities. Of course, I am just ranting… early morning coffee induced rant. There is no point to this rant, since both of the above will happen sooner or later. The fact is, we are living a cyberpunk novel… we just don’t see it yet.

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Bank of America employee mistakes faulty fax as a bomb threat

soum — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:13:00 +0000

This gotta be one of the funniest news I have heard in a while!. Via International Herald Tribune

“A Bank of America employee misinterpreted a faulty fax about a bank promotion as a bomb threat Wednesday, leading authorities to evacuate more than a dozen neighboring businesses.

The fax from a marketing group about a Bank of America small business promotion contained images of a lighted match and a bomb with a fuse, bank spokesman Ernesto Anguilla said. But words explaining the promotion did not transmit.

“The fax machine malfunctioned, so a partial image came through that looked somewhat suspicious,” Anguilla said.

The missing text included the phrases “The countdown begins” and “Small business commitment week June 4-8,” according to a copy circulated by police.

“It was an internal communication designed only for our employees,” Anguilla said. The fax was sent to the bank’s branches in parts of New England as well as New York and New Jersey.”

Raises a bunch of questions. Would it be seen as a threat, if there was no fear of terrorism in the US? Does waging a war reduce or increase that fear? In a “free country” (and we can get into a rhetorical discussion on what a “free country” means), this would probably be just frowned upon, laughed at and then trashed or pasted on the wall as a joke.

And if there is a constant undertone of fear, what’s the way to mitigate it? A recent film I made on Mumbai bombings for Current TV, I realized that despite an attack a year, there is really no fear in the city (though there is a sense of resignation to destiny). Would love to see an article that dives deeper into the psyche.

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Remotely programming a cardiac pacer or defibrillator

Bank of America employee mistakes faulty fax as a bomb threat