In my writing class, we've been reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End, a sci-fi novel that investigates the rapid progression of technology and its potential impact on the way that we interact one with another. One line was especially interesting in light of a video that I watched recently about crowdsourcing. It noted that independent sources of information (i.e. regular people, blogging, taking pictures, sending texts and tweets) were smarter, better-informed, and more numerous than government and media sources. The video I watched talked about humanitarian efforts in Haiti, where crowdsourcing was used to generate up-to-date geospatial maps for disaster relief in the ruins of Haiti's 2011 earthquake, all based on input from citizens sending in text messages, emails, etc. Eventually, the U.S. government, among others, adopted these patchwork maps, as they were consistently the most accurate and most useful, by far surpassing even the round-the-clock efforts of formal specialists and analysts. We are seeing a revolution in the way that information is transmitted and consumed, and as we learn to embrace this, we will see doors open to new and exciting discoveries both in the world of communication and in other spheres of human interaction.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Crowdsourcing and Geospatial Mapping
In my writing class, we've been reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End, a sci-fi novel that investigates the rapid progression of technology and its potential impact on the way that we interact one with another. One line was especially interesting in light of a video that I watched recently about crowdsourcing. It noted that independent sources of information (i.e. regular people, blogging, taking pictures, sending texts and tweets) were smarter, better-informed, and more numerous than government and media sources. The video I watched talked about humanitarian efforts in Haiti, where crowdsourcing was used to generate up-to-date geospatial maps for disaster relief in the ruins of Haiti's 2011 earthquake, all based on input from citizens sending in text messages, emails, etc. Eventually, the U.S. government, among others, adopted these patchwork maps, as they were consistently the most accurate and most useful, by far surpassing even the round-the-clock efforts of formal specialists and analysts. We are seeing a revolution in the way that information is transmitted and consumed, and as we learn to embrace this, we will see doors open to new and exciting discoveries both in the world of communication and in other spheres of human interaction.
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Wow! That is fascinating. It is amazing to see how regular, everyday people are able to make such a great impact by being savvy with the new forms of digital media. It makes me wonder how the curriculum for primary education is going to have to change in order to accomodate the new forms of technology to challenge students.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome. I feel as though crowdsourcing could either pose a problem to things like googlemaps, or if google maps was able to integrate in pictures from the public then they could really increase the depth of their programs. It will be interesting to see if companies and programs start harnessing crowd sourcing or if they will wait and be over run by it.
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