Do you think there is an environmental crisis?

Personal Safety: What do you think about an app which uses speech recognition to detect crisis and alert trusted friends?

• There are already some personal safety apps which provides a panic button to be pushed by user in case user find himself in crisis. I think they are great tools but at the same time there can be circumstances where user does not even get time to push a button e.g. if somebody is part of an accident, somebody has tied your hands or you are forced not to touch your mobile. I am thinking of this concept where app uses speech recognition to detect crisis like accident, abduction, hostage and raise an alert to the trusted friends. What do you think about this idea?

• Answer:

  Good Intentions, but this might be a classic case of technology not being the answer to everything wrong with a society. When thinking solutions, think prevention rather than cure - if someone is already in danger, that is way expensive a proposition (in terms of time, stress, emotional), than preventing it. So help drivers drive safely, women to be safe, etc, rather than focusing on the disaster aftermath. It also makes business sense, because in all fairness, the circumstances you are talking about are probability wise low (and hence people might not see the value in purchasing a service - everybody believes everything will be okay; we need that attitude to get out of bed everyday) and as a business / enterprise, you would have to drive fear, the message that "This can happen to you" to get people to subscribe to the service / buy the app. Don't do that. Please. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/08/the-inevitable-outcome-of-marketing-fear.html - If that aspect has sunk in well, now think about use cases like senior citizens and see how you can enable them to be safe - and for their children to have the peace of mind that they are okay - most accidents happen by elderly parents accidentally falling etc. There might be an opportunity there - it might not be speech driven though.