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  3. As The Economist went to press, Steve Fossett, a famed and fearless aviator

As The Economist went to press, Steve Fossett, a famed and fearless aviator

游客2024-01-02  21
问题     As The Economist went to press, Steve Fossett, a famed and fearless aviator who went missing over the Nevada desert on September 3rd, had not been found. But it was not for want of trying. Mr. Fossett has been the subject of one of the most intensive civilian manhunts in history—and also, fittingly, one of the most technological. Besides the usual panoply of search-and-rescue aircraft deployed by America’ s Civil Air Patrol, which wound down its search on September 17th, a different sort of search effort is being conducted online, using satellite photographs.
    These pictures of the search area are being provided by two firms that supply information to Google Earth: GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. The search itself is being co-ordinated by a corner of the Amazon empire called Mechanical Turk. This is an online job market which farms out tasks that humans are good at, but for which software is poorly equipped, like labeling images and transcribing speech. For the Fossett hunt, volunteers comb through the images and flag any that include what might be a plane or its wreckage.
    Among those who keep track of slightly less high-profile missing-person cases, the story will be strikingly familiar. In January Jim Gray, one of Microsoft’ s programming gurus, disappeared while sailing near San Fransisco Bay. Mr. Gray was as big a celebrity among computer geeks as Mr. Fossett is among thrill-seekers, and the story played out in the same way. A friend at Amazon, Werner Vogels, got in touch with DigitalGlobe, and the firm provided thousands of images. Within four days, Mechanical Turk was hosting the images and more than 10, 000 volunteers were sifting through them—though to no avail, as Mr. Gray was never found.
    Mechanical Turk’ s director, Peter Cohen, says that now the search protocol has been established, conducting such "distributed" searches is much easier. The limiting factor is the satellite imagery—which obviously has to be up-to-date. At the moment, only three commercial satellites provide the kind of resolution that can help in efforts like the Fossett hunt. The firms that own them have governments as their main customers. This makes search-and-rescue imaging a secondary concern.
    That looks set to change, though. DigitalGlobe launched its second satellite, WorldView-1, on September 18th, and will launch a third late next year. GeoEye will launch its second next spring. This machine should set a new record for commercial satellite resolution; just 41cm(though that will still not be quite good enough to spot people as well as planes). In total, these launches will double the amount of satellite time that can be dedicated to requests for instant pictures.
    Cost, however, is less of a problem. Area such as the Nevada desert and San Francisco Bay are not strategic, so taking photographs of them does not displace paying customers—indeed, DigitalGlobe is not charging for the pictures being used in the Fossett hunt. With the extra capacity provided by the new satellites, the cost will drop even further. And Mr. Cohen is convinced that the internet will always come up with the few thousand volunteers needed to scour the resulting images. Far from being the invasion of privacy it was recendy claimed to be, the technology behind Google Earth may in time grow to be a standard search-and-rescue tool.
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答案                             土耳其搜救
    据《经济学家》报道，著名而勇敢的飞行员史蒂夫-佛赛特于9月3日在飞越内华达沙漠的途中失踪，至今仍下落不明。但这不是一般的尝试性搜索，佛赛特先生已经成为人类搜救史上备受关注的目标之一。更确切地说，那是高科技运用的终极体现。除了9月17日因机械故障而停止了搜救任务的美国非军事空中巡逻队调遣的常规搜索营救飞机，网上也展开了一种不同以往的搜索营救讨论——运用卫星图片。
    搜索区的这些图片是由向谷歌地球提供信息的地球之眼及数字地球两家公司提供的。亚马逊集团的一个名叫“机械土耳其”分支机构把搜救列入了自己的任务中。这个分支机构是一个网上就业市场，承办人类擅长的各种任务，但在图片标明及演讲记录等软件处理方面的配备则有不足。为了搜救佛赛特，自愿者彻底搜索了任何可能是飞机或飞机遗骸的图片和旗帜。
    对于那些追踪其他名气要小一些的失踪人员案例的人来说，这种事情显然是耳熟能详。一月份，微软程序设计专家吉姆-格雷在旧金山海湾附近航行时失踪。跟佛赛特先生一样，格雷先生是计算机领域首屈一指的技客。格雷先生是计算机领域的一朵奇葩，像佛赛特一样，他也是一个制造轰动的人，所以，也对其进行了类似的搜救行动。格雷在亚马逊集团的朋友沃纳-沃格特与数字地球公司取得联系。该公司为其提供了成千上万的图片。仅仅4天，机械土耳其把图片组织起来，同时，1万多名自愿者筛选了图片。然而仍然毫无结果，一直没有找到格雷先生的下落。
    机械土耳其的负责人彼得-科恩说目前已经建立了搜寻协议。这样划区搜寻的难度就降低了。其中的制约因素便是卫星图片，显然图片需要不时更新。然而此时，只有三家商务卫星能给予像搜救佛赛特那样的努力帮助。这些公司都有自己的主要客户——政府。这样一来，搜索与营救任务就暂时被搁置了。
    然而，看起来情况也在起着变化。数字地球公司将在9月18日发射了第二颗卫星——世界视野一号，同时预计次年后半期会发射第三颗卫星。地球之眼公司将于次年春发射其第二颗卫星。根据对商务卫星的承诺，需要在这个机器上安装一个新的记录器：仅仅41厘米(尽管要拍出清晰的人和飞机，还不那么好)。这些发射卫星将从整体上给卫星的运转速度翻了一番，这样一来也就能为客户提供即时图片了。
    然而，费用反倒不是什么问题。像内华达沙漠和旧金山海湾这样的非战略性地区，对它们拍照并不会改变付费客户。数字地球公司并不为佛赛特搜救任务的图片负责。由于新卫星提供了额外的容量，也就进一步降低了费用。哥本哈根先生相信网络总是会有数千名追寻照片的志愿者。最近有人宣称：这不是侵犯个人隐私，谷歌地球背后的科技可能很快就成为搜索营救的标准工具。
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