The Tsunami as a Wake-Up Call to Bridging the Digital Divide By Andy Carvin, EDC Center for Media & Community
http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=84
As everyone knows by now, the last week and a half has been a trying time for the people of South Asia. Tens of thousands of people are dead, millions of lives ruined. Being thousands of miles away from the epicenters of destruction, it's sometimes hard for me to fathom the scale of how awful things are.
It's times like this I step back and begin to wonder about the work I do on bridging the digital divide. Sometimes I ask myself, does any of this really matter? Is bridging the digital divide really that important when compared to rebuilding the lives of millions of people, let alone protecting them in the first place?
But as we learn more about why some people survived and others didn't, it's made me realize that bridging the digital divide is more important than ever. Bridging the divide -- particularly in terms of promoting technology literacy and e-government for all -- could have actually saved lives.
One of the first stories to hit home for me was that of Mr. Vijaykumar, a former volunteer at a telecenter in Nallavadu, India, run by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. Vijaykumar, who's now living in Singapore, received word of the tsunami well before anyone in southern India did. He called his family in Nallavadu, then called the telecenter. Another telecenter volunteer living abroad, Mr. Gopu, did the same thing. Immediately the community sprung into action. Using the telecenter's public address system, local volunteers alerted fellow villagers. Among the 500 families in Nallavadu, 150 of their houses were destroyed -- yet no one died, because the telecenter responded to the imminent crisis at a time when no other local or national warning system was in place.
The Nallavadu telecenter is fortunate because it is a part of the Open Knowledge Network (OKN), an initiative that provides communities in developing countries the tools and skills they need to become content producers. In the case of Nallavadu and other local OKN communities in southern India, they're using the initiative to collect weather data and distribute it to fisherman in order to protect them when they're out at see. Because Nallavadu's telecenter volunteers had the information and communication technology (ICT) skills to gather information and get it out by all possible means - including mobile phones and public address systems -- they saved thousands of lives. The telecenter became a lifeline for the entire community.
Most other villages were not as fortunate: across south Asia, millions of people are mourning the loss of family, friends, livelihoods. Much of the blame, perhaps, should point towards the lack of an early warning system for the Indian Ocean, as there is in the Pacific. But even if such a warning system existed at the international or national level, would the information gotten to the village level in time? We'll never know for sure, but I imagine the answer is probably no.
Why? Because most villages lack the technological infrastructure and the ICT skills needed to get the information quickly, assess it and respond appropriately. In some cases, it's not even about technology skills: simple oceanography skills could have saved more lives. A young girl named Tilly Smith saved scores of people when she saw the tide suddenly vanish and recognized it as one of the first signs of an impending tsunami - something she had just learned in her geography class. And then there are the Morgan Sea Gypsies of Southern Thailand: their elders had taught them that when the tide rushes out, they should run to the hills. They managed to escape, while others who lacked this knowledge went to pick up fish on the beach or watch the low tide -- with disastrous results.
In these cases, it was wisdom and geographic know-how that saved lives. But in other cases, technology access and ICT skills could have played a major role. And I'm not talking about computers here. While in-home Internet access is still a rarity in many villages, mobile phones are much more common. SMS text messaging could have been used to send warnings to millions of mobile phone subscribers, who in turn could have used community resources to alert their neighbors.
For example, after the tsunami, the Swedish government sent text messages to all Swedish citizens whose mobile phones had recently been used in Thailand. These messages have helped the Swedish government pare down the list of who's missing and who's not.
But what if SMS had been used prior to the tsunami? What if there had a been a system in place in which millions of mobile phone subscribers could have received SMS text warnings over their phones? Taran Rampersad, an Internet activist in Trinidad & Tobago, posed this question last weekend on his blog (which is also available here on the Digital Divide Network). Within 72 hours, a small team of programmers responded with the creation of ARC: the Alert Retrieval Cache. The idea is simple: a person sends a text message to a particular phone number, including key words on a particular subject he or she wishes to be addressed. The system then sends the SMS text to every phone number that subscribes to the system, based on each subscriber's interests.
Right now, a practical application could be a relief worker sending out an SMS because she needs access to more antibiotics: using the names of those antibiotics as key words would then route the text message to people and organizations who might be a source for those antibiotics.
But imagine if this tool had been used prior to the tsunami? A geologist who picked up the initial tremor could have sent a text message to alert municipal authorities and community leaders, as well as ham radio operators, telecenter volunteers and anyone else who subscribed to the ARC system, so they could all receive the warning on their mobile phones. How many lives would have been saved if this had been in place two weeks ago?
Tools like ARC will hopefully play an important role when the next disaster strikes -- it's just a matter of when. Volunteers like Taran Rampersad and the dozens of people working on the TsunamiHelp blog are making a real difference when it comes to setting up emergency response systems in which all Internet users may do their own small part. But this doesn't mean that governments don't have a role, of course. There are few, if any, governmental tasks more important than protecting the lives of the public, and sadly, the system failed millions of people this time. In many countries, for example, it's possible to buy cheap emergency radios that automatically activate in times of crisis. Other governments have elaborate emergency systems in place so that national authorities may interact with municipal and region officials. Emergency broadcast messages are sent automatically through the airwaves. Here in the US, "reverse-911" systems like the one funded in Orange County, Florida by the U.S. Department of Commerce's TOP program can blast out thousands of automated emergency recordings to every household that owns a telephone. (If only TOP hadn't zeroed-out by the White House and eliminated by Congress...)
While not every type of disaster may be predicted, some can be predicted. And in this particular case, precious minutes and hours went by with no warning -- no emergency television broadcasts, no community sirens, no alerts to ham radio clubs -- nothing.
There is no excuse for this. Disaster warnings for the public should be a right of all people and the responsibility of all governments. Whether it's through community radio, television, Internet access, SMS text messaging, or knocking on doors one at a time, governments must do their part to alert and mobilize communities during times of crisis. That's why the notion of e-government for all is so important. It's not just about providing every government agency with a Web page and an email address; it's about creating straightforward systems that connect government officials with all the people they serve, no matter their income or education level, disability, ethnicity or the language they speak. When it comes to warning people about pending disaster, no one - no one - should be left out of the loop.
So the next time you think about bridging the digital divide, put aside the academic debates of how many people have email access or which communities know how to use a search engine effectively. Instead, think of it this way: does everyone have access to the tools and information they need to keep their families safe and sound? If the answer is no, then you'll know that we still have a lot of work to do.
-- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com ----------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
