Kill switch

Abstract: Paolo Gerbaudo is a Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London. His research focuses on the interaction between media and space in contemporary activism. He is the author of Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (2012), a book discussing the relationship between social media use and new forms of public assembly in the social movements of 2011 from the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street. This article discusses the effects of the Internet communication blackout, or ‘kill switch’, unleashed by the regime of Hosni Mubarak during the first days of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. It argues that while the regime hoped that the blackout would stop the mobilization and disrupt the activists’ internal coordination, this move ended up having more of a positive mobilizing effect than a disruptive one. This was for two main reasons. First, the ‘kill switch’ shattered the consensus in favour of the regime and the passivity of middle-class youth. Second, by excluding the possibility of a virtual distant connection with the protest, it forced many sympathizers to turn into supporters of the movement by physically joining the occupation in Tahrir Square. Reflecting on the implications of these findings the article concludes by asserting that the role of social media as a means of mobilization is highly complex and ambivalent, and that it has to be understood in complementarity with, rather than in opposition to, face-to-face interaction and street-level communication.

Abstract: Embodiments of engine starting systems for watercraft wherein a warning is issued in the event the starting system is enabled when a kill switch is closed. In some embodiments the starting system is also disabled if the kill switch is closed.

Abstract: A safety system stops continuation of motion of a powered vehicle such as a boat or motorized land vehicle when a person falls off the craft. In one embodiment, the system comprises a wireless transmitter carried by the person, a receiver-controller (24); an actuator (50) and associated latch key (40), both being part of a hold-release assembly (60); and a spring loaded kill switch (30). When the person falls off the vehicle, a change in wireless signal causes the actuator (50) to disengage the latch key (40) from the kill switch (30), thus stopping the engine or other propulsive means. In other vehicles, a power switch is rotated, or a sail is disconnected, by an actuator. One kind of actuator (50) stores mechanical energy which is manually input by compressing the spring. The system is useful for retrofitting onto vehicles, especially boats, which have kill switches which are actuated by a lanyard running to the operator.