Monday, July 18. 2005

The Flow of Free, Location-Aware News in the Age of Terrorism

We know that real-time geographic information is here: weather and traffic are examples. We know that remote sensor technology provides these data and can display them on maps. And we know that access via the internet and cell phones is providing anyone who will pay for it the ability to see it. We know that a shop keeper in Shanghai can see traffic congestion in Chicago...but why would he? We just know that he can.

We also know that in the very near future, everyone with a cell phone will be carrying their very own publishing tool. Each phone will be equipped with some location determining equipment. And most likely each phone will be able to capture imagery. Link the two together and you have a single photojournalist. Link the millions of cell phone cameras to the internet and you have the ability to publish images in real-time, in a single "e-zine". Classify these images by geography and you create instant photojournalism with the opportunity to tune into the world at any time, from any place.

In and op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commended his own efforts to embed journalists with troops to report from the front lines in the war on terror from Iraq. "As a result (of embedded) journalists - and because of them, many more Americans - received a greater understanding of the realities of the conflict, as well as the sacrifices undertaken daily by America's men and women in uniform. This added considerable texture to the nuance and perspective of the overall news coverage."

I wonder if the Secretary would be so encouraged by this "greater understanding" if the quite sensitive "location" of the troops were revealed during the news coverage. Great angst was displayed when FOX News reporter Heraldo Rivera drew a crude map in the sand of where he was embedded. We may be at a point where the location of everything is simply a natural and obviously significant byproduct of photojournalism and not necessarily by professionals.

We may be able to prevent journalists from revealing their location, but what happens when a civilian, or worse a terrorist, captures the location of troop movements and broadcasts it to perhaps al Qaeda headquarters via their cell phone. What happens when the everyday bystander captures the movements of suspected terrorists and sends the photo and their location to their personal blog? What happens when hundreds of people capture a terrorist attack, as we saw in London, and broadcast "evidence" of location-based information? Will police authorities be able to handle this information?

We are looking at the possibility of many thousands, perhaps millions, of photos, information, and other documents with location-based context being captured by cell phones, all with the ability to broadcast, in real-time, geographic information. All of it uncensored; all with a geospatial context. The images will tell where and when. The prospect of this type of information gathering is both fascinating and scary. We are close to a time know when people wll instantaneously point their cell phones in the direction of suspicous people, things, and events. And we will know the when and where of that moment. We may have thousands of people, both civilian and military dropping geographic "bread crumbs" denoting their location on purpose or by accident, just because they can. Are we ready for this kind of "texture" and "nuance"? And are we prepared to commend our photojournalists on their location-aware instruments of publishing and public discourse?

Posted by Joe Francica at 23:05 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

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