Hold Onto Your Seatbelts

So . . . I am into #data AND #visualdisplayofinformation, which has led to a deep interest in #signage. (see other posts). I found this gem on the flight from Eindhoven, NL, to Naples, IT.

First, kudos to #ryanair for taking the critical safety information card out of the seat pocket and right in front of your nose (eye level) on the back on your tray table that has to stay up from taxi to take off and again on descent and landing. I can’t think of a better placement for Public Safety.

The message is tempered a bit by the onboard food advertisement, but I can get over that because I give another kudos for the all-graphics depiction. The Ikea-esque simplicity is better than the Babel of English. BUT . . . let’s take a closer look at the characters.

EMERGENCY OXYGEN – CHECK

SEAT BELTS – CHECK

LIFE VESTS – CHECK

INFANT FLOTATION DEVICES – oh wow! Bad news for the kiddos. I’ve gone over it 10X and it’s just a hot mess. Take the flotation device with you by all means but there’s no figuring that out in an emergency. We’d all be standing in the aisles going “I think that strap goes there and then you loop and then . . . I got nothing.” Hold your kid tightly because you’re going to be rigging this vest in the water.

EMERGENCY LANDING – Brace for landing and crawl to exit frames are really good, easy to understand pictures. Prohibited items though: glasses? Really? I don’t think so. People who need to wear glasses need to wear them to exit a plane in an emergency. I think the other item in that circle is dentures too. Why would you take them out – even in an emergency?

EMERGENCY EXITS – CHECK

EXIT A DOORS – Hmmmm. Not sure what is happening in frame 2 with the right arrow going upward. As for jumping out of a plane with your arms crossed on your thighs, that ain’t happening. I dare you to do that on a stationary slide without falling over. As someone who has actually done the escape an airplane by jumping on the chute (FAA training with the Navy), your arms go everywhere and anywhere to keep upright.

Thanks to Ryanair for the innovation. Keep working it. You are improving our safety.

“If people touching you under water bothers you, i suggest you stay out of the pool.” Josh Pray on playing water polo

Predicting the Future … Past and Present (?)

Ahhhh … to see into the future.

Makes me wish I’d bought Google at $10, if it even started that low.

I would’ve bet a bigger spread on the Broncos.

I would wait to buy insurance at the precise moment before I need it.

Big Data fuels predictive analytics in ways that are changing how we do business and govern and save the planet and ourselves.

But for today, it’s not so serious, just Friday fun.

This info graphic was published by the Information is Beautiful Studio in 2012.

Sweet stuff, but unfortunately not terribly prescient. The design is fabulous with a sliding scale of most to least likely. The relative tracks for dystopia and utopia crossing at perhaps … reality? So, what sticks out?

Within a year or so

I’m not sure why an immortal mouse is good. Humans or rodents that don’t die is a bit scary.

I doubt touching through our phones will happen this year and I don’t know why we’d need to smell digitally; however, half the stuff on my phone seems pretty useless given a practicality litmus test. (But i wouldn’t give it up.)

I do believe robots are used on farms; they just don’t fit a pair of overalls.

2022

The Presidency held by a third party candidate? That’s just ridiculous. Of course this year’s election has enough oddities without adding a third party.

Commercial flights without pilots is actually pretty viable, although it’s likely a technician of sorts will remain somewhere in the front, mostly for consumer confidence.

Uploading the contents of anyone’s brain to a computer may do them any good, especially mine.

2025

Tracking technology embedded in skin will be obsolete. With Big Data, anyone’s exact location won’t be hard. (It’s not that hard right now.)

I should hope we won’t have a world government in place. My prediction is highly fractionalized, non-locative habitation. Chew on that a while.

2037

Will it really take 25 years to get to all automated cars? I think we’ll get to a long tail much sooner and the last miles will never succumb.

100 years out

Tax abolished in the US is intriguing. It doesn’t say what flavor but it’s a good thought. Any government is going to need some sort of revenue but “the box” is taxation. I’m hoping the revolution will think outside in a peaceful transaction.

2001: A Space Oddity

Making predictions can be fiction blended with fact. Take the 1968 Stanley Kubrick classic 2001, A Space Odyssey, which set the bar for a quarter century on what we would look like by the turn of the millennium. Hal scared everyone, but the space ship design aren’t so far from wrong.

Check out the trailer or watch the whole movie if you’re up for the challenge.

https://youtu.be/gSoGSeuxdTs