Snatching Us Back From the Brink of Disaster. Can Technology Save Humanity? Kim Solez

1. Snatching Us Back From the Brink of Disaster. Can Technology Save Humanity? Kim Solez A View From Precipice Edge

2. Will Technology Save Humanity? When a cell phone with an extra battery saved my life on Signal Hill in December 2004, it got me thinking about whether this was a metaphor for how technology will save us all in the long run.

3. Or Will Technology Lead to Our Demise? I will tell you the Signal Hill story and you can come to your own conclusions.

4. The Leonard Cohen Connection I run Leonard Cohen Nights musical tribute events celebrating Leonard Cohen’s birthday in September in Edmonton. Vicky Hynes runs a three day Feast of Cohen between Christmas and New Years, in St. Johns, Newfoundland. In 2004 she asked me and my wife to join them for their event as a special guest. We arrived December 28th with plans to attend the December 29th performance at 8 pm.

5. Signal Hill Beckoned to Us Out Our Hotel Window The evening of the 29th and morning of the 29th we had nothing to do and it sat there majestically looking back at us! “Come to me” it seemed to say.

6. After lunch we took at cab up to Cabot Tower at the top of Signal Hill.

7. My wife was searing a normal coat with reasonable friction against the snow, whereas my jacket was quite slick. This becomes important later in the story!

8. The clerk at the gift shop said she was having a bad day, advised us to return to town via the scenic North Head Trail. We did notice there were no footprints in the fresh fallen snow on the trail!

9. It was a beautiful cliff edge walk but the going became more and more difficult with strong wind and sea spray. !

10. Finally we could not go forward or back but were crawling along on our bellies. I kept slipping toward toward the edge. My coat was very slippery and we were cold enough to have stopped shivering, an ominous sign!

11. Finally I was able to grab onto the wooden post of the 17th bridge and call 911. The circuit board of the phone kept freezing up and shorting our from the sea spray but by warming the phone and battery in my hand and replacing one battery as the other froze I was able to make the call.

12. After about 40 minutes we were able to see the lights of our rescuers coming over the ridge. Five stayed on the safe ground above us and one rappelled down to our steeply inclined icy rock perch. He connected the two of us and our digital camera to the rope and we gradually inched back to safety one by one.

13. My lips were frozen so it was hard to talk to the media assembled at the top of the hill. The police whisked us back to the hotel. We freshened up and were able to make it to our seats of honor at the Feast of Cohen show right on time at 8 pm!

14. A cell phone saved my life in 2004. That was unusual back then. Today almost everyone has a cell phone. Cell phones today “save” lives every day, every hour. If the default position of human beings is to have a cell phone, is it correct to say that we are saved by cell phones regularly, or is that the wrong way to think about it? We reset life’s expectations to where we are always able to reach others when we need them. That becomes just normal life.

15. When technology is successful it seems to disappear into the background, we no longer think about it.. Is it possible we are safer because of technology and just don’t realize it? Safety accompanies abundance and post-scarcity.