Moblogging in war-zone
Interesting article at CNN on the increase of people using cellphones to give the world their view on things in war-zones like Lebanon-Israel right now.
Cell phones today transmit audio, video, graphics, photographs and text. When combined with the proper web application, cell phones enable any citizen in any country of any background to publish information and share it with the world.
Says Erik Sundelöf, who was interviewed for the article. His view: “Every Cell Phone as Citizen Media Outlet” [full article by MediaShift's Mark Glaser]. Erik is using all possibilities to promote his visions. You can read about it elobarately over at his blog, the article’s title says it all: The future of the new improved media
A quote that will catch your attention:
“… Delivering unfiltered, uncontrolled and as free news as possible is a crucial part of any work towards and/or to sustain democracy. Making people trust the news media and to enable them to feel part of the news making is equally important. … Imagine people being able to report back from events such as the London bombings, the riots in Paris and the recent events in Belarus or maybe just report from your neighborhood about any crimes or other problems.”
I still have my ethical doubts about all this, but I guess that it is a development that simply cannot be stopped: The technology is here and linking everything is - as is being proven - a matter of very little time.
How do you feel about developments like these? How much does it endanger your private life?
As I see it i use this analogy: Sailors aren’t afraid of storms, they learn to live with them them, learn to handle them and/or build better ships. The same can be said about wars. They will probably come, but we will need to learn how to deal with them.
Going on to the privacy issue which I addressed in a blog on the geospatial web:
“Answer these questions: Do you really want everyone to know where you are, have been and also keep track of that. What stops your boss to install this on your cellphone? What are the long term consequences? Do we really want to live in a big brother society? Are there enough advantages to overlook the dangers?
I see this a broader debate on the web as whole. However, developers and solution architects need to start to think in these paths. The sense I got from talking to some developers at the conference and outside is that many developers tend to hide from addressing these issues. I think of a quote from the one of the managers at Google Earth (commenting something else though): “Just because you can do it, does not mean that you should do it…” Unfortunately there are a lot of developers that do this big mistake.”
The full blog is found here:
http://inthefieldonline.net/blog/2006/06/18/where-is-the-geospatial-web-heading/