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How an Android Phone and Facebook Helped Route Haiti Rescuers
One intrepid Android fan is extolling the virtues of the open smartphone platform that helped him to route SOS messages in the recent Haiti disaster. "Well, when you are in such a situation, you don't really think about going to Facebook, but it happens that I have a Facebook widget on my Android home screen that regularly displays status updates from my friends. All of a sudden, an SOS message appeared on my home screen as a status update of a friend on my network. Not all smartphones allow you to customize your home screen, let alone letting you put widgets on it. So, I texted Steven about it. As Steven had already been working with the US State Department on Internet development activities in Haiti, he quickly called a senior staff member at the State Department and asked how to get help to the people requesting it from Haiti. State Department personnel requested a short description and a physical street address or GPS coordinates. Via email and text messaging, I was able to relay this information from Port-au-Prince to Steven in Oregon, who relayed it to the State Department in Washington DC, and it was quickly forwarded to the US military at the Port-au-Prince airport and dispatched to the search-and-rescue (SAR) teams being assembled. So the data went from my Android phone to Oregon to Washington DC and then back to the US military command center at the Port-au-Prince airport. I was at first a little skeptical about their reaction: there was so much destruction; they probably already had their hands full. Unexpectedly, they replied back saying: 'We found them, and they are alive! Keep it coming.'"
maybe i'm being whoooshed, but doesn't "communication for everyone, everywhere" sound rather socialist ? Not that i'm against it... right wing would be "communication for whomever can pay for it, wherever it's profitable", wouldn't it ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Because if they used any other protocol that doesn't involve sending huge amounts of redudant text and shiny graphics over a commercial telephone network it would never make the news.
Personally I'd find it much more amazing if some radio hobbyists managed to repair a transmitter from bits of scrap salvaged from the rubble and sent out a packet using that but we'd never hear about it because FB and Twitter were not involved
Great, but just about any smartphone can do this, even most of the closed smartphone platforms, nothing special.
The part you quoted, yes, but not the part that kicked the whole thing off: he noticed someone's Facebook status update on his home screen widget. If he had to open an app to get Facebook updates, he wouldn't have seen it, because he had better things to do than browse Facebook.
I don't know about all the other smartphone platforms, but I'm pretty sure this is something the iPhone can't do. It doesn't have widgets; its home screen only shows app icons. You can get push notifications for certain events, but friends' status updates aren't among them, and you likely wouldn't want to get a message for every status update anyway.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
If the guy in Haiti had access to update his Fbook status, and was able to send and receive sms - why didn't he just contact the State Department directly?
This story isn't about technology, it's about personal access.
Guy in Haiti didn't have it - so he sends the equivalent of a smoke signal, and is lucky enough that someone notices it and does have access.
This all sounds really contrived, and I'm not impressed.
The problem with this mentality is that the optimal functioning of human communities on the planet must be in everyone's best interest. A significant amount of research indicates that with the advent of sufficiency (an end to human poverty and need), education, civil rights (particularly for women), and available contraception, the problematic future for human beings would change for the better overnight. Famine, war, plague, and overpopulation would vanish. With the first world sharing of breakthrough technology, even the problems surrounding climate and pollution could be fully addressed, and a brighter future for all people could be ensured.
Giving all people a powerful means by which to be in communication, relate, grow and thrive together in collaboration, is in all our best interest, and trying to place this in the context of a business plan or a financial justification is as myopic as letting millions a year die because a proper cure for malaria makes poor business sense.
The principle being that we don't have infinite resources, so you have to be able to justify their allocation. In capitalism, this is done on the free market. Socialism advocates political allocation.
It is up to the reader to do some research and decide which is generally more efficient.
I encourage the reader who takes up that challenge to also research which is specifically more efficient.
In a particular mathematical model, free markets solves an optimization problem. They also seem to work well in practice in many situations.
However, they work less well the more barriers to entry and exit there are in a given market. Having to build a large amount of infrastructure (factories, cell towers) in order to start producing is a barrier to entry. Having to fight a monopolist or cartel is a barrier to entry. Network effects (where present) means the free market will converge towards a monopoly or cartel situation.
Particularly for cell phone communication, there's the infrastructure problem, network effects, plus you need some radio frequency spectrum allocation mechanism. It looks like it's a good case for allocation through public policy.
Of course, feel free to compare the US against Canada and your favourite European countries if you feel empirical today; but you may also want to control for corru^Wlobbying influence (if able).
I read the excerpt linked by another poster. That's an extremely poorly written book. First, it's full of unsupported assertions, and second, the assertions are strung together almost randomly. Also, it has far far too many section titles.
His analysis may have some validity, but what an abominable presentation.