The Aircraft Black Box - powered by Twitter?

My heart goes out to the friends and families of those who were lost in AirFrance Flight 447….I found out pretty early about the incident via someone’s retweet on Twitter.  With the little I’ve followed the story, I know it’s going to be a long time till authorities recover the blackbox, if at all.  Once they do, the little black box might be their only hope to figure out what happened.

With all the technology we have access to, why is it so difficult to track where an aircraft went missing? I don’t mean to write a business plan for American Airlines and I feel kinda morbid writing this post but what if we had Twitter inside the Black Box for every airplane?  What if automatic status messages were posted for each flight?  We’ve managed to get WiFi 35,000 feet above ground - what’s the hold up?

I know what you’re thinking - downtime! (sorry @ev).  But trust me guys, by the time this technology actually gets considered, Twitter would be ready to handle it!

Think about it:

- each time these sophisticated engines do a status check, a tweet is automatically posted
- early warnings are issued when there are system failures
- the onboard GPS posts a tweet, say one per minute, with the exact co-ordinates (ALWAYS letting us see where the aircraft is)
- a secondary mechanism (maybe the on board touchscreen entertainment console) allows passengers to post to the same twitter page

Not only could the ground flight controllers get early warning signs, potentially helping them guide the aircraft to safety but if there is an unfortunate tragedy like flight 447, at least hundreds wouldn’t be left wondering where the aircraft disappeared.

In addition to raising airline safety standards, wouldn’t it just be cool to follow some one’s flight?….full-on with maps and status updates?

I don’t know what the logistics are but I do know that the tiny “powered by twitter” symbol could potentially lead us to the black box or maybe just eliminate the need for one.

Till death do us part (or you change your Facebook status, what ever comes first!)

A British man is being prosecuted for killing his wife over her facebook profile.  Why?  After living apart for a month, the wife changed her status from married to single.  The husband was enraged when he saw the status change in his news feed and drove up to his wife’s house where he brutally stabbed her to death.

For someone who constantly updates their facebook status, this is scary! What if you’re in the midst of accepting random friend requests and you inadvertently edit your profile?  Can I get shot because I aroused controversy over a political subject in my status update?

Or is it possible that some day, I’ll be pushed over my own “wall”?

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