Slashdot Mirror
IT and Natural Disasters
rikomatic writes "The Asian tsunami in December has dramatically shown how much SMS, email and the web are now indispensible parts of disaster recovery. The folks at the Digital Divide Network have organized a virtual conference on 'How New Media and the Internet are Reshaping Tsunami Relief Efforts' on Wednesday, Jan 12 at 10am, EST. Among the featured speakers will be Dina Mehta, co-founder of the Southeast Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog. In the hours following the tsunami, she and a group of South Asian bloggers created the volunteer-driven web portal for tsunami relief news and resources. Beyond using IT to coordinate post-disaster relief efforts, early warning is another critical need. Hopefully the UN's World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan later this month will address the IT infrastructure needed to make sure that people get advance warning before the next natural disaster strikes."
It's pretty easy to understand, really. The moderator read a comment pointing out where people could see tsunami videos. He/she thought this to be in poor taste, or was disgusted by it, and thus marked the comment Troll.
What disturbs me is that people think that watching video of the tsunami is somehow unethical. Are we supposed to shield ourselves from reality? Come on. As far as I'm concerned, it is the duty of every person who can stomache it to look once, just once, at the videos of what happened. It's your responsibility as part of the human race to see and get a small taste of the horror, not to sit in your armchair and sigh "Oh, too bad all those people died," as if the rest of the world was just some quaint figment of your imagination.
There's a difference between doing that and playing the footage repeatedly and laughing about it. A big difference.