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“Everybody is aware of the risk of cell phones and texting in automobiles, but I see more and more teens distracted with the latest devices and headphones in their ears,” says lead author Richard Lichenstein, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “Unfortunately as we make more and more enticing devices, the risk of injury from distraction and blocking out other sounds increases.”
…Researchers reviewed 116 accident cases from 2004 to 2011 in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones. Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in death to the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30 (67 percent). More than half of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains (55 percent), and nearly a third (29 percent) of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the crash. The increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to documented rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write about a distracted character and the accident their distraction causes.
Journaling Prompt: Write about an accident that you had because you were distracted.
Art Prompt: Accident
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about the dangers of distraction
Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon on Flickr
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Science fiction is my favorite genre to read. For one thing, a writer can deal with ethical, moral, and culture issues that often are too touchy to take on in a standard literary form. But more interestingly, science fiction writers must study today’s science and predict the future.
In an essay titled “Futuristics,” Isaac Asimov pointed out that the obvious prediction is not the most interesting one. It was easy to predict the automobile; what was difficult to predict was the traffic jam. It was easy to predict radio; what was difficult was the soap opera. It was easy to predict the income tax; what was difficult was the expense account. Equally, it was easy to predict the cell phone—Dick Tracy had his wrist radio back in the 1930s—but what was difficult to predict is that users would become so attached to them that they would step into traffic or allow their cars to drift out of control….Science fiction might well be considered the literature of unanticipated consequences….In fact, to write an effective science-fiction story, all you need is something that the world thinks is an unmitigated boon and to focus on the unforeseen problems that it might create. -Science Fiction Imagines the Digital Future by James Gunn in Analog Science Fiction and Factmagazine
Writing Prompt: Go to your favorite news site, read a science story, predict an unanticipated consequence that will happen if that science is developed, and write a story about it.
Journaling Prompt: Do you read science fiction? Why or why not?
Art Prompt: Science
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about an invention in your lifetime that has had unexpected consequences.
Photo Credit: Kraetzsche (busy) on Flickr
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I always thought the technology in Star Trek was pretty cool, but even Captain Kirk didn’t have one of these.
“Brain cap” technology being developed at the University of Maryland allows users to turn their thoughts into motion. Associate Professor of Kinesiology José ‘Pepe’ L. Contreras-Vidal and his team have created a non-invasive, sensor-lined cap with neural interface software that soon could be used to control computers, robotic prosthetic limbs, motorized wheelchairs and even digital avatars.
“We are on track to develop, test and make available to the public- within the next few years — a safe, reliable, noninvasive brain computer interface that can bring life-changing technology to millions of people whose ability to move has been diminished due to paralysis, stroke or other injury or illness,” said Contreras-Vidal of the university’s School of Public Health. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: What would your character do with a brain cap? (Feel free to invent one that has advanced further than the one in this story.)
Journaling Prompt: Write about a piece of technology and how it has changed your life dramatically.
Art Prompt: Technology
Photo Credit: Ryan Somma on Flickr
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