The 'global village' unites in adversity

The 'global village' unites in adversity

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta, vmahmud@yahoo.com

The shock of the tragic loss of life in the Southeast Asian
region from the Dec. 26 tsunami continues to reverberate around
the world.

People from all walks of life have dug deep into their pockets
to donate money and equipment for the ravaged areas, as have
major corporations.

Apple Computer, for the first few weeks, dedicated its entire
home page to the calamity, urging visitors to donate to the
various charities linked to its website.

Amazon.com collected pledges on behalf of the American Red
Cross and Australia's three main TV networks, along with most of
the country's radio stations, held a live concert telethon last
Saturday to garner more aid.

Coverage of the rogue wave has filled the airwaves and the
Internet, but never more so as shown by the bloggers, or people
who write personal online diaries. Known as blogs, or web logs,
these homemade websites offered first-hand accounts and even
photos of the tsunami.

Wiz Bang (www.wizbangblog.com/archives/004664.php) and Cheese
and Crackers (www.jlgolson.blogspot.com) are just a few of this
elite writers community that have managed to galvanize the world
to generously donate as well as try to contact missing loved
ones.

Cheese and Crackers even has a collection of links to amateur
movie footage of the tsunami from Indonesia, Thailand and Sri
Lanka. This allows the world to see and study an event that has
never been recorded on film.

The video reveals not a gigantic wall of water that we usually
see in Hollywood films but a series of huge waves that become
stronger and stronger, flooding the mainland.

More evidence of the devastation can be seen on the website of
satellite imagery company Digital Globe (www.digitalglobe.com),
which has before-and-after pictures of Banda Aceh. With all of
this data, mankind should be able to prevent such catastrophes
from happening again.

There have been calls for a tsunami early warning system,
which apparently is lacking in some countries due to costs and
cumbersome bureaucracy. In fact, the Bangkok Post reported that
the head of the Thai Meteorological Department was suspended for
failing to issue an emergency alert to save vacationers in
southern Thailand.

It has been said that previous warnings of such a calamity
years ago had angered the local tourism industry there.

However, as the Bangkok Post noted, there is no infrastructure
or plan for a massive controlled evacuation. What do they do?
Where do they go? Who controls the flow of the masses?

Popular IT commentator Robert X. Cringely
(www.pbs.org/cringely) noted last week that we do not really need
to wait for governments to get their act together to create a
tsunami warning system. With the Internet and digital
convergence, regular people and communities living by the sea
should be able to prepare their own action plans.

Data from national or international seismic observatories, as
well as non-governmental agencies such as the Preparatory
Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Organization (www.ctbto.org) could be aggregated and dispatched
to anyone who signs up.

An alert via e-mail or even Short Messaging Systems (SMS)
would prompt those near the earthquake zone to take steps.
However, this would require the data from these organizations to
be freely available.

Back in the old days before public services such as the
police, fire department and city government, communities would
work together in a close neighborly fashion.

Now, with the advent of the Internet, templates for a
community disaster action plan can be drafted by volunteers
online, with contributions and suggestions from the whole world
to be implemented locally.

This open-sourced plan of action will continue to evolve as
more and more information is gathered and analyzed.

As bloggers today are amateur journalists, today's technology
has democratized information so that anyone can be given accurate
data to be acted on, making them amateur seismologists, community
leaders or survival experts.

Reliance on a single conduit of information is a recipe for
disappointment since it represents a single point of failure for
an action plan. Communication should go both ways, with people
listening to the government and vice versa.

The era of "need to know" information can no longer apply in a
world that continues to evolve technologically. Everyone has the
power to make changes, but they must receive the best data taken
in context to make the correct decision.

This is where the global village can help.