[TechTalk] When the System Knows Before You Do: The Hidden Power of Emergence - EP075

And speaking of global warming and natural disasters, I'm still fascinated by this early detection system for earthquakes.

Exactly.

So let's get into it, Anele.

So I think today's is, again, we are going to be pivoting around a New York Times article that allows one to really, really, and I mean, really get into kind of the older nuance when it comes to

what happened

in a very terrible earthquake in Venezuela.

If people don't know, Venezuela is in South America at the cusp of really, you know, between Central America, Mexico, and of course going south.

So it's really in that cusp.

And of course, they are prone, that region is really prone to earthquakes and so forth.

So But unfortunately, this time around, it really was quite a terrible one.

There were a succession of earthquakes that happened.

But the key thing about it was that there was a warning system.

I think the first thing that we read is a New York Times article that talks about how phones alerted millions before the quake shook Venezuela.

And it talks about how Venezuela does not have a national early warning system of its own.

But people with Android phones received alerts from Google's Earthquake Alert System, which can pull data from more than 2 billion phones equipped with built-in accelerometers.

The same sensor that detects rotation on your screen can also sense vibrations from seismic waves.

That is, I think the first and foremost, just to explain...

So a phone has got sensors, right? So those who don't know this, a sensor is just a thing that allows you to measure the external environment, right? So whether it's a GPS measures position, accelerometer measures how fast you're moving or your phone up and down or rotating it and so forth.

But all of that information, whether you like it or not, is part of the data that's been sent back to a mainframe.

And in this case, if you have an Android phone, is back to the Google service.

Now, what Google has done, and this has been active for a while, I think over 10 years, if I'm not mistaken.

So early, early Android phones already had that.

Is that they now use, with their supercomputers, now use that and can now kind of centralize specific hotspots that match up what we have known in the past to look like an earthquake.

And they use the data from cell phones to match.

And if it does match, now use that as a warning system.