NewScientistTech has a funny little article on the role of social networking sites — or something like them — in communicating information about disaster response among members of the “public.” The idea, in part, is that peer-to-peer technology might improve information sharing. There is much of interest here, including the possibility that the “public” in a disaster might have a new kind of agency if it were able to actively, and in real time, disseminate information about what is going on. Also of interest, one supposes, is the application of the web — built as a communication system that would keep ticking after nuclear attack due to its distributed structure for passing along information — to disaster response.
COLLABORATORY: VITAL SYSTEMS SECURITY
The Vital Systems Security collaboration examines how, today, security is being constituted as an object of knowledge, intervention, and political reflection. It proposes that the security of vital systems such as energy, transportation, communication and health is one norm in relationship to which security is being reproblematized. A central goal of the collaboration is to examine these issues through collective, conceptually driven inquiry that addresses rapidly developing contemporary problems.
