If you’re like a majority of dealers and integrators in security, one reason you attend trade shows is to “question the claims of manufacturers.” You stop by a booth to explore what a new gadget can do or to check into a problem with a product.

We’ve grown so accustomed to new technology that it’s everyday. It’s an everyday thing to pay at the pump, shop online, burn music to CD. It’s an everyday thing to speed through the toll-tag lane. It’s everyday your company is buying and installing equipment that is sensing, transmitting, monitoring and tracking events. Why shouldn’t it work perfectly every time?

It’s easy to take new technology for granted. Surveillance of the Red Planet, viewed from your own desktop, can bring back the wonder.

For the 2003-04 mission, two rovers landed on Mars, bigger and more ambitious than the ‘97 Sojourner, designed to conduct reconnaissance and send back results. Each arrived packed with technology to take 360-degree visible color and infrared image panorama and to drive around exploring. Each carried antennas to allow communication of pictures and other data back to Earth through the Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor orbiters.

The to-do list for the rovers – Spirit and Opportunity – was not completed. Performance of the new technology was not 100 percent. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were disappointed and elated by turns, but always impressed with every new finding.

Oftentimes it’s cool to be unimpressed. Now with GPS in the car, it’s annoying to push too many buttons to hear the turn-by-turn directions. Now that identities must be verified, U.S.-bound tourists are annoyed, waiting in line to add biometrics to their documents. Now that my aunt has a picture-phone, she’s annoyed being unable to send photos to just anybody with just any picture-phone. Technology has come so far, yet our expectations are farther still.

At ISC Las Vegas, we expect to see new technology, focused on delivering ever more effective security.

That’s only good business. Your demands have to exceed your customers’ expectations. New technology doesn’t always perform 100 percent, and everyday people are counting on your systems. No wonder you’re exacting and skeptical.

To re-discover the wonder of new technology, visit http://www.nasa.org. Check out the progress by NASA and JPL. All U.S. taxpayers and all the people of planet Earth are counting on them, and we’re a demanding bunch. From your desktop, you can appreciate technology in a new way, thanks to Opportunity, Spirit and the first surveillance of Mars over the IP (Inter-Planetary) Network.