[xmca] re: How Civil Disobedience Improves Crowdsourced Disaster Response

[Stephen Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>]

(Mike e-mailed the below to me, and perhaps others.)

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the link.

The term "crowdsourcing" apparently originated in a 2006 article in Wired.  It is a new one for me.  

When I was in Rome for ISCAR last year a demonstration of about 500 to 1000 people marched by my hotel.  I ran out and joined it for a mile or two.  Its theme was anti-government corruption and raised numerous human rights issues.  The singing was amazing.  Many young people and all ages were there.  The protest was very colorful and striking in the bright Italian sunshine and tree-lined boulevard.

I think that demonstration would count as a kind of crowdsourced event.  

I talked to a few demonstrators who could communicate in English.  The action was not called by a specific organization, but from texting and forwarding text messages over the previous days.  They had been hoping for 10,000 people, but the semi-spontaneous event was very high-spirited nevertheless.

I happened to be reading a book the other week about the Haymarket massacre 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair).  Word-of-mouth in the neighborhoods was much more common among workers in those days than today.  

In that sense, crowdsourcing isn't new, it is just being revived in a world where people despite living in much bigger towns and cities are more isolated - something that the new technology seems to be helping change, at least a little.

- Steve


On Aug 29, 2012, at 1:31 PM, mike cole wrote:

> of possible interest
> mike
> 
> On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Patrick Meier (iRevolution) <patrick@irevolution.net> wrote:

> Dear All,
> 
> This positive feedback loop between civil resistance and crowdsourced disaster response may be of interest to some. It relates to the Pre-Doc I did at Stanford's Program on Liberation Technology last year.
> 
> Thanks,
> Patrick
> 
> 
> 
> 

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