Mulling over MARNIE TROSCLAIR to STEVE ASHER 09 May 2005

SA> Victoria to get emergency calls  

SA> A NEW early-warning system for emergencies using automated phone  
SA> calls will be trialed in Victoria from July.  

 MT> What?  Computers that talk?  What will they think of next?      

Computers that think before talking?

 MT> I hope you don't see anything sinister in this development, Steve. 

Nothing sinister in its intended use. However, there is always the
possibility of "mission creep", where the technology is used for other
than emergencies, and simply becomes another channel for "delivering
content" whether people want it or not. It might be valuable in alerting
people of such things as bushfires, cyclones, tsunamis and other natural
disasters, escaped criminals or animals, terrorist attacks etc. It might
be a pest if used to "warn" people to vote for the Prime Minister or his
preferred candidate, as happened via commercial marketing channels last
year.

 MT> It merely represents the application of technology in addressing  
 MT> a need. A similar approach involving automated phone calls is  
 MT> being used by schools to alert parents about their children being
 MT> absent from classes. The underlying technology for many of these
 MT> automated phone calling systems is the Voice Brick.  

 MT> Consult your favorite oracle for information about the Voice Brick.

Hmmm... this seems to be an Intel product, perhaps suitable for a school
to use for absent children, small businesses to supplement their human
call answering, etc. I suspect the system being trialled would need to
be capable of generating hundreds or thousands of outgoing calls per
hour. Possible downsides of this, in the trial areas, might be that
the small rural exchanges (typically with less than 1000 lines) would
be congested & prevent real emergency calls from getting through.
In emergencies, authorities generally discourage "social" calls - eg
to inform relatives and friends that all is well, to allow people 
whose lives or property are in imminent danger to get through. Obviously
the trial would determine if the automated equipment was causing network
congestion.

 MT> ;-)   Ask Jeeves.  Or Google.  Or Yahoo.  :-)    
 MT> Tell the dog at Dogpile to fetch.  

Scroogle scraped. :)

 MT> I've got one of those systems from US Netcom.  
 MT> It's called PhoneMaster for Windows.  

 MT> It comes in handy for alerting a large group of associates about  
 MT> upcoming events, like monthly meetings, or a pending election.   
 MT> It can also be used to conduct opinion surveys. And, like your  
 MT> article reports, it automatically compiles information about the
 MT> number of successful calls, the number of answering machines it
 MT> reaches, the number of incomplete calls, and so on.

It may "come in handy" for alerting people who have given consent
to be alerted, but is an intrusion when I am eating. The number
of times I answer a call, only to be greeted by the sounds of silence,
has increased to the point where I often don't bother to answer the
voice line, unless I am expecting a call. (Telemarketing equipment
apparently autodials, and then passes the call to the first free
operator when the victim answers ... often there is no free operator,
so the victim hears nothing).

SA> The system is intended for emergencies such as floods, fires,  

 MT> Or tsunamis?  Think about it.  

Yes, even tsunamis.

SA> For years there have been problems in many areas of Australia  
SA> because radio and television stations are often networked  
SA> and even automated, and at times have no local input.  

 MT> Even worse, they don't work unless you plug them in and turn them
 MT> on. The automated phone call system is a bit more proactive. It
 MT> reaches out to the people you want to contact. It gets all of
 MT> those phones ringing... sort of like Jobe in the Lawnmower Man. 

And potentially congests the exchange, so noone can call 000 to report
a real emergency.

 MT> P.S.  These automated phone call systems can be used for lots of
 MT> tasks.   Check out http://www.usnetcomcorp.com for a few ideas.  

Wonderful! the Lewisville Elementary School can make 166,811 automated
calls to reassure parents that their child's first day of kindy went
fine, or that their child is safe on an overnight excursion. There's
something to be said for the Australian practice of charging for local
calls ... it would tend to keep a lid on crap like that, as the school
would think twice before wasting its resources.

Cheers, Steve..

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