#200 - Ten years later

Its the eve of the 10th anniversary of the al Quida attacks on America. So much has changed in the world in the past 10 years. Just fly once and your life will be impacted by the hate of extremist 1/2 a world away. Lets take a look at the technology and how its impacted our response to being attacked.

We are now scanned, probed and much of our life closely monitored due to the attacks. Heaven help you if your name coinsides with someone on the No Fly List. Computers have a very significant role in deterring similar attacks. The US Armed Forces even has a Cyber Command to actively attack enemies and defend from same attacks. There is great worry that the next 9-11 will be a cyber attack that shuts down our important infrastructure, like power, Internet and communications. Imagine an attack that shuts down our cell phones? Its been tried quite recently.

The recent earthquake and several hurricanes that have hit Virginia have disrupted our power supply and all that means. We are so dependent on power. One week without power is like being transported back to the 15th century. Every time we lose power, I'm thankful for the battery back up system we have that makes shutting things down safer (no damage to valuable systems). I see the US having more of these back up systems in the future. Sales of back up electric generators is at an all time high in Richmond, Virginia. There have been good talks on how to make our power system safer and hardened to prevent terrorist attacks. I hope we move forward with these proposals.

The us of robots in combat has also come about in the war on terrorism. Drone planes routinely run missions in a very dangerous part of the world. Robots are used to diffuse bombs and go into dangerous areas. These technologies will soon move back into the commercial arena. The use of robots or remotely controlled vehicles will become more common later in this decade is my prediction.

The technology for body scanning was first used in medicine, but has had much research dollars spent on it for security purposes. I would imagine this increased spending will also come back to help the medical fields that invented this technology. Imagine a safe simple scan that can identify the vast majority of diseases in a human. You'll go to the doctor once a year for your scan and know immediately of any issues.

Let's remember the losses we were subject to 10 years ago, but lets move forward as a nation (or better yet world).