From the Vieweg paper about Information and Communication Technology regarding the role of aggregation technology during the Virginia Tech shooting and the ESP game discussed in class, it seems that a very effective problem to assign to groups is identification. In the Virginia Tech situation, identification of dead students was performed surprisingly accurately via Facebook groups and the ESP game could identify pictures and photographs using the wisdom of the crowd.
Along these lines, endemic outbreaks could also harness large group problem solving potential. The specific problem I am thinking of is the peanut butter recall from earlier this year where peanut butter and peanut butter products from many different brands, locations, stores, and goods were identified to contain salmonella bacteria. The information was widely dispersed all throughout the nation when customers hear from different sources about which peanut butter products were being recalled but it was difficult to receive updated, real-time information about all the different sources under suspicion from various parts of the country.
What could be done is that customers, store-owners, peanut butter product companies, and the FDA could share and compile the information they receive so that everyone within the peanut butter eating nation could see this information in one place and know specifically how he or she is affected by the outbreak. A list of products, locations, stores, etc that is searchable by each category would be useful so that customers could avoid the bad peanut butter while compensating their peanut butter eating habits as little as possible.
Technology could obviously play a huge part in the aggregation, organization, and retrieval about endemics. People of various locations and sources can dump all of their data into one area that can be retrieved by another interested party. However, this problem is tackled by technology in a slightly different way than the Virginia Tech situation, mostly because it is more widespread and there is little verifiability in this Technology. Through Facebook, credibility was gained by contributors within the Virginia Tech network and those who could cite veritable sources. The peanut butter recall information, though it provides people incentive to share information, does not instill the same urgency and people are much more likely to be inaccurate or malicious with information.
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This is an interesting example-- I remember that when this happened a few of my friends put links to articles on their Facebook statuses and I read many articles that had in fact compiled lists of what certain brands should not be eaten.
ReplyDeleteIt might have been helpful to have more localized compilations of such facts-- perhaps Wegmans could post online how they were affected by this. Maybe they did this and I just didn't hear about it...however, in a case like this, it was probably just as well that they put the signs up in the store where the products had been removed. Not being able to buy one item probably wouldn't ruin a trip to the grocery store.
It is also an interesting example, because although people do not have as much incentive to tell the truth since it is not information about the death of someone-- it is also not as severe if there is false information on say someone's Facebook status. One could easily find another source, and there would not be the psychological pain of, for example, hearing a friend did or did not pass away, and then finding out that information was incorrect.
I really liked your application of the Vieweg et al. article. I would have never made a connection between the peanut butter salmonella outbreak with the shooting at Virginia Tech. I also liked the solutions you gave towards the end of your post. It would be very wise to have some sort of public site or source of information that would let people know what's going on. You were a little vague when it came to your proposed solution, but I think I know what you mean. The stores, customers, peanut butter companies, and FDA should post information in like a blog or wiki format that can be updated by anyone who would have to identify themselves with one of the groups mentioned above. Customers can say that "I bought peanut butter brand X and someone in my family now has salmonella. I live in XXXX, USA and I bought it from Store Y." And the other groups can update consumers about which brands and stores are dangerous, etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kyle, I would also have never associated the peanut butter problem with Virgina Tech shootings besides that it was a disturbance to people's normal lives. In both cases I also noticed people pulling information from sources all over. The difference was the Virgina Tech disaster was all within 2 days while the peanut butter problem was people trying to find reliable sources over a longer period of time.
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