Personal Security/Safety System (PSS)

A young woman is walking home late at night by herself, but she is not alone; a virtual ``safe walk'' or ``virtual escort'' is walking along side her.

She is lost, and inadvertently wanders into the wrong part of town, where she stops at a late-night gas station to ask for directions. The gas station attendant invites her in, asks her to take a seat in the waiting area while he looks for a map. The door locks behind her, and cannot be opened from the inside.

She never arrives at her destination and so friends and relatives to whom she's trusted her `cyberkeys' unlock her memory which is spread out across cyberspace. After she is rescued from the back garage of the gas station, her lucid memory of the attendant helps police compose a composite sketch, leading to his arrest.

After this experience she buys the next generation of NetCam which has a `panic button' that will immediately summon help, as well as a heart rate monitor and other features that might alert others of a medical problems as well. Since she wears a pacemaker, it is also desirable to have this instrument monitored at a remote location, and to have it reprogrammed for variations in her level of activity.

The personal security system raises some interesting social issues regarding wearable cameras versus surveillance cameras in our society.


Wearable Webcam