The whole story surrounding the Ahmed’s clock debacle is incredibly unclear.
From what I’ve gathered his engineering teacher saw the clock and told Ahmed to put it away as it could scare some people. Then and alarm on the clock went of and when Ahmed took it out of his backpack his English teacher freaked out.
Now it doesn’t even seem that he built the clock from scratch but rather transplanted parts from an old alarm clock. I jumped to the conclusion that it was DYI kit.
Either way, was the English teacher right to freak out? Based on her knowledge and biases, many people would say yes.
But is the problem islamophobia or simply a terrifying lack of public knowledge surrounding the technology we use everyday?
Let me just say, it’s blatantly obvious to me and other informed people that his device is anything but a bomb. And It’s so easy to check. There was ample time to do so before calling the police, the teacher however did not posses the knowledge to do so. And therein lies the problem.
This picture illustrates an important point.
However, people who post this pic think it means the clock looks like a bomb. What it actually means is that the general public has no idea how electronics work.
Also more like 80% in this day and age.
“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” -Carl Sagan
Funny he should use the term ‘blow up’
Not everyone has to be an engineer, but in a more informed society this could have been avoided.