Toast to a new year of achieving great feats

IWAS body-surfing at the Strand early yesterday morning. I ducked under a wave and surfaced to see an astonishing thing. The night before I’d seen the movie Man of Steel – a great intergalactic dogfight between the enemies of Krypton.

Now, at the Strand, here was the same spaceship, hovering above me.

It took a second or two to realise it was a drone. That this hi-tech dragonfly above the waves was on the look-out for sharks – after the beached whale had attracted several “Men in Grey Suits” to Strand’s coastline.

How astonishing what technology can now do.

I heard recently that anti-rhino poaching forces had enlisted the help of some geniuses armed with complex algorithms to look for repeated patterns in cellphone usage – as a way of tracking down poaching units in the bush.

And that security companies in Joburg now use “blank screens”, not banks of TV screens showing multiple live camera sites. The logic, you see, is that no security guard in a control room could possibly monitor a dozen CCTV screens, at once, for hours on end.

Instead, their electronic systems show just a blank screen. Shoppers moving back and forth along a mall promenade warrant no attention. But the sudden, dramatic movement of four men, along the same route, is aberrant. The blank screen starts blinking. Gotcha!

Geolocation technology offers a plethora of new opportunities.

Simply switch on your phone and you’ll know, in an instant, where the closest B&B is for the night. And how to summon transport there uber-quick.

Soon, you’ll be able to press a “panic button” on your phone, and a small garrison of “first responders” will be activated to your aid.

With so much technological advancement, one would be forgiven for asking, with awe: “Wow, what will technology be able to do next?”

But that’s the wrong question, of course.

Technology is not the end, only the means. The “enabler”.

The really important questions are: “What are our greatest needs? What intractable problems have we still not solved?”

Only once we are clear about these needs, must we then enlist the smart guys. Ask if their rolling revolutions of wizardry can bridge the divide.

In the field of education, there are already giant leaps forward – more access, to tens of thousands more, to top teaching.

Back on the coast, it’s not about the drone. If that technology in the sky continues to search the waters below, and issues automated warnings, then the cool drink salesman on the beach can continue his business amid the army of happy sunbathers, and provide for his family all summer long.

Here’s to a New Year of achieving “unbelievable” things.