Last Last Last No Really cue the music at the award speech LAST mandatory post

Well it's been a long strange journey my friends. We have weathered a lot this semester and here I thought we were done after last week but no like an award ceremony I have to overstay my welcome as the band grows louder. But these last thank yous are too important to impart before saying adieu. We were given the topic of saying how we are well suited to address the rising integration problems of technologies in crisis response. This may sound like a mouthful but really it's using skills we have acquired throughout our long and strange academic journey to do what we know is necessary. I think we are very much prepared to handle whatever is thrown at us kind of like MacGyver.

We in IST and SRA have been inter-disciplinarly trained in a plethora of fields which allows us to deftly handle any and all situations thrown our way especially when it comes to communication. I can not speak for the IST half or the rest of the Penn State students but I know we are all very well diversified. I in particular have a very unique background that my major has afforded me. I have taken: communication classes, law, SRA (which is a mix of terrorism, technology, thought processes, business, and current issues), some IST classes, as well as Pysch classes and I have some knowledge of Business and Science from the few classes I have taken in those fields. If that background doesn't make me MacGyver like and well able to handle any situation I don't know what does.

So why am I and why are we more capable than most than most at handling communication issues that arise, I believe it is our background. The one thing the speakers and all of the readings had in problem was that communication was a diverse problem with many facets and parts and we are nothing but prepared for many different things based on our education. If someone came to me with a list of reasons they didn't want to share or integrate information I can already tell you at least three things that will be on their list: cost (business), contracts (law), and the benefits (psych/SRA). Also possibly how the integration would go, what would be required on their part and so on and so forth. Guess what? That's part of my major in the Social Factors and Risk Option trying to get everything in order for something like that, trying to take two different types of fields or companies that don't normally connect and making a connection. I would draw out a table of the cost benefit analysis, do a risk assessment and then draw up an implementation plan. Then I would be able to use the psych background and psych classes from my major and use what I have learned there to try and persuade said companies. There is no one better qualified than me and my classmates to do with these rising issues because we take classes on them and stare them in the face. We work on real life solutions to real life problems instead of theory like a lot of other school.

This may have been a bit of a rant towards the end but because of our diverse background and our unique ability to look at a problem from many perspectives we will be the ones who solve this problem or I say to you it is unsolvable. Thanks again for a fun semester guys, sorry I wasn't able to work in more pop culture references in this one but to make up for that I leave you with A Rocky Montage. I will argue with you later weather or not it is the best one but have fun and good luck the rest of the semester.

I May Have Been Wrong (personal Post 3)

They say it takes a big man to admit when he is wrong. I say when it happens as frequently as it does to me it's not that hard anymore. I wrote a post during the semester talking about the lack of things you could communicate with 140 characters, of what I felt was useful information. It turns out 140 characters is enough to communicate a lot both harmful and good. There is a saying from Uncle Ben in Spider-Man lore "With great power comes great responsibility," and I believe people try and seek out information in both positive and negative ways and they can do so with great efficiency through tweets. This was very apparent with the PSU earthquake and also the riot from just after Joe Pa got fired.

The first incident the earthquake was impressive because it spread like wildfire. Not just through Penn State but through the whole east coast.

This shows just how powerful and how quickly twitter allows people to communicate and "activate" if you will. Back in the day you used to have to try and call people or wait for something to be on the news now people can be their own news and try and get every fact feeling or thought under the sun into public light for better or for worse. The Penn State cell network went down because of the amount of traffic and only half the people on campus felt it and it wasn't even that big here. It truly is impressive the need for people to connected and to try and communicate all the time now.

Unfortunately we were in the national spotlight on the night Joe Paterno got fired. With all of the media here they caught us at our worst and I thought for sure I would find a trend of PSU students trying to organize on twitter unfortunately I was unable to find that. Also more unfortunately I was able to find a link to people tweeting during the riot, both from and not from the campus and it doesn't shed us in a very pretty light. The link is here to the Bleacher Report. The students moved like a well oiled machine I suppose because of previous riots. Which is unfortunate.

Twitter for better or for worse is a place for people to speak first and think later. The word vomit runs ram-pit. People use their brains less and less to try and become part of the hive mind that twitter runs. I am not saying twitter isn't useful I am just saying there are only so many ways to express yourself in 140 characters or less and it relies less on deep thought and more on just being as quick as possible. I hope that twitter proves me wrong and becomes one of the most innovative technologies of the 21st century. Though I am sure most would already consider it so thus far.

Closing Time (Last mandatory post)

Well here we are guys you don't have to go home but you gotta get the hell up out of here. I mean it's a bitter sweet symphony. One last call for alcohol so finish you whiskey or beer. Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Hey.... O wait the final project is still looming over our heads like the eye of Sauron over all of Middle Earth. But that is a struggle for another day. But speaking of Sauron we did have a guest speaker in our last "class" Dr. Anthony Robinson who wants to use his technology in SensePlace2 to do a number of things include try using data from tweets to try and predict trends and what might happen. His discussion was very lively and very quick paced to keep us all on our toes which I enjoyed.

Dr. Robinson's technology takes geo-location of the people tweeting and also what they are tweeting about to find hot spots and trends in what people are talking about. This is just one of its' basic features. The technology like the one ring can be all knowing of where the other rings or in this case events are happening and how if everything goes according to plan. The tweet gathering and organizing technology  will find an incident and eventually be able to gather a sequence of events on an incident based on what people have tweeted which I find a very interesting and good use of twitter. That is as long as all of the data can be verified and proven accurate which I feel could be a problem but still this could be a very handy tool none the less. I really hope things pan out for him and this potentially very useful piece of technology and you can tell he really cares about it and is doing what he wants to do.

The thing that concerns me is the geo-spatial technology itself. I don't know about the rest of you guys but I am all for cool new gadgets and things. I love them, geek out over them openly but at the same time they worry me. It scares me at how invasive they can be. With smart phones and facebook and foursquare and even computers at times they know where you are and you can't always shut it off. Apps can do this too. Like the one ring they call out to whomever wants the data for whatever reasons. At times I feel like Frodo being chased by the Ring Wraiths wanting only to hide but they never stop coming wanting more and more of my personal information. It's like we are all living in plain sight there is no privacy anymore. I suppose this is why I am hesitant to try new types of technology, specifically social media because even though I need to know about it I can't help but get this stabbing feeling in the pit of my stomach of how they will use my information against me. The more I learn the more I would like nothing more than to drop off the grid completely if only to feel some sense of privacy anymore.

I would like to thank you all for being great classmates and for making a three hour class fun. Also even though required I hope you have enjoyed reading my posts, though not the most professional and at times seemingly tongue in cheek I have had fun writing them and I hope you have had fun reading them. As our fellowship is drawing to an end hopefully we can keep in touch and good luck to all of you in your final projects. I really hope we can make some sort of difference no matter how small to feel like we are solving the conundrum we have come to know as crisis informatics. I feel like we have all learned a lot this semester and hopefully we can put it to good use.

In closing I would like to leave you with closing time

140 items or Less (mircoblogging post)

First of all on Monday that was the first time I had been to the Extreme Events Lab and I thought it was pretty cool. While the 3d map technology is not as impressive as it may have been a few years ago it was still really neat to see 3d put into action in a proactive way. I must say when he started moving us around the plane I did start getting kinda dizzy. Also I found it interesting that they use the five screens and while they are doing their work they listen to music and the music lets them know what is going on with their research. It lets them know if there is a correlation between things they are trying to put together and also it lets them know if big events are going on such as the riot/gathering downtown this evening which is making twitter and facebook feeds everywhere.

Now back to the topic at hand micro-blogging. A topic I find myself deeply divided on. It will not go away it's here for the long haul but it is just one of those things I cannot get on board with for some reason. I am not a twitterer, I don't like tweets, and I am not sure I ever will be.

I can see the positives of twitter and tweeting for disaster response purposes. I mean I get it, there are not a whole lot of wasted words when your message can only be 140 characters or less. It can't really be misconstrued, it has to be short and to the point. Like for example: Holy Shit Earthquake in (insert place here), or OMG Tooootallly A Riot Downtown Right now get down heuur. You know exactly what the focal point of a tweet is, you can tell a trend very easily by identifying key words. Again given that there are 140 characters it should be too hard to find a single word that all the tweets have in common. It is good for just a general overview of what is going on and where. It may be able to help you get into some slightly more specific things like help needed here or food needed here but not too much more than that because there just isn't the room. If you have any doubts that something is going and and widespread though definitely check twitter and you will find out really quickly what is or isn't important or going on in the world right now.

On the other hand if you want to get deeper into the topic and into more specifics tweeting can only help you so far. I mean if we can get to the root of every problem in 140 characters or less we should start burning dictionaries by the truck load. It just wont happen life is complicated. I think that is just the wordiness in me that will not allow me to like twitter. You have all be subject to my blog and therefor know I love my compound sentences and slow build up to "deep and meaningful thoughts." To me twitter is just like a mental quickie never allowing the deep connection and leaving you feeling wholly unsatisfied with the situation. If we want to know where problems are or what the general feeling on those problems is go to twitter. If you want to know specifics of where to send help and what is really going on i.e. how bad the damage is, how much aid is needed and things of that nature twitter isn't going to help. Maybe I am letting my twitter bias cloud my judgement on this matter and I am sorry if I am but I just don't see how anything profound can come from  140 characters or less. Hopefully twitterers will prove me wrong.


I leave you with some random quotes that hopefully you will enjoy by Bill Cosby

Down Came the Rain (week 10 post Japan)

Our impromptu class time led there to be fewer of us than usual but the class was interesting as always. We were taking a look at the small amount of information available on the Japan earthquake and tsunami. We talked about a bass-ackwards study on tweets right after the tsunami and earthquake in the impact zone and around it. We watched a gentleman with a charming Scottish accent talk about earthquakes in a BBC special. Last but not least we learned as much about hurricanes as our fathers in twenty minutes as they could learn spending a week in front of the weather channel during hurricane season. We also learned the proper way to do research and why the method on tweets was bass-ackwards. I think the only thing about as surreal as seeing my classmates in the daytime was what we were discussing, the video of the tsunami is was breathtakingly scary, like something out of a movie because things like that don't happen in real life. We watched video of the ground ripping apart, buildings falling, and the ocean falling on land, land that hasn't been close to an ocean in thousands of years.

One of the big things I think we talked about this week was that the paper on tweets was the first research paper published after the incident and it is important if only for that reason. While in class we discussed how the way of going about the research was done poorly, the conclusions drawn were wrong and even the specified type of study was incorrect with the results displayed. This blew my mind that this was an okay thing because it was still the first paper with scholarly merit done after the incident. So it will get cited hundreds of thousands of times and get plenty of recognition and all this person had to do was half ass something. It's a wonder to be in academia isn't it. I didn't know it was like being a weatherman; as long as your are one of the first few people there it doesn't matter if you get it right or wrong it's just important that you got there quick and said something.

That was something that really frustrated me. What is the point of your research if it isn't useful. I guess it's a jumping off point for someone else but man to get money to do a half assed study is crazy to me. Other than that this was a very informative class on the human element into breading fear and confusion into an area. The radiation "problem" caused by the earthquake was front and center with people feeding into the fear and paranoia and the news just covering it for weeks and months. It was interesting to see what happens when people don't keep their heads. This is what can happen when people don't understand a certain thing. Radiation is a scary and dirty word and it's a word you should just run from without asking what it is. The government was slow to respond as well which did not help anything. People can assume the worst and this is what happens when they do that. We need to work on getting people to try and stay calm and proactive after a disaster. That is something else I learned while in class. The more proactive you can make people feel the less fear and panic there will be. Give people something they can fight and try and wrap their head around. They don't understand radiation or tsunami's but they do understand debris and people in need and the want to help them.

It was a very interesting class all in all. Here is some pieced together footage of the tsunami .