So today John Hilkevitch did a story about the CTA Alerts utility that I set up on UPOC with my brother, the CTA Tattler.
It’s always dangerous to talk to reporters– you never know what quotes they’re going to cobble together and say you said. But I think he did a good job of attributing some cohesive text to me based on my rambling.
When I said that I was "incredibly interested in the ability of human beings to affect their surroundings instead of whining and complaining", what I was talking about was a concept I’ve been thinking about alot lately:
Open Source Emergency Response.
The current way we deal with emergencies (terrorism, service outages, etc.) is that the people who are near the emergency but not immediately injured are considered objects who must be managed or removed so that the First Responders (fire, police, EMT) can do their jobs.
But what if we applied the things we’ve learned from the open source software movement– that everyone can help everyone, that an immense and loosely coupled group of people can often outperfom a finite set of professionals, that you don’t have to wait for the answer to come from on high– to emergency response?
If we all knew what to do in emergencies– how to move the injured, how to spot remaining danger, where to go for cover, and so on, we could all be assets and not just obstacles.
The CTA Alerts utility is a small step in that direction. That’s what I meant to say.