Citizen empowerment

Overview

Citizen empowerment takes place when ordinary citizens have access to new technology which make it possible for individuals, working alone or in groups, to accomplish things which previously required trained professionals using expensive equipment.

Citizen empowerment is of particular interest in dealing with emergency situations such as natural disasters and terrorism, when the traditional protectors and rescuers such as police and firemen may not be available in time. It has been pointed out that the only actions on 9/11 which assuredly prevented a terrorist act from occurring was the rebellion aboard United Airlines Flight 93: informed via cellphone of the Word Trade Center attacks, the passengers on board apparently seized control of the plane and crashed it in an uninhabited, killing all on board, rather than allowing it to proceed to its destination (which is not known for certain but was probably The White House).

Unfortunately, members of the protector caste – and their superiors in government – tend to act in such a way as to reinforce existing authority, often actively preventing ordinary citizens from helping. This was especially notable in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in which ordinary citizens were often prevented from rescuing themselves and others, and where those who succeeded were in some cases punished for circumstantially trivial violations of law.

Empowering Technology

Citizen-empowering technology includes:

• camera-phones allow bystanders to capture recordings of significant events, rather than requiring media reporters or professional photographers
• cellphones
• personal GPS devices
• the Internet (a whole list unto itself)
  • wi-fi equipped portable computers (including laptops and PDAs)

Links

Articles

• 2007-01-21 "Designed to Let Us Down: our deliberately frail cell phone system" by David Brin
• 2004-04-18 The Wi-Fi ride of Paul Revere by Joshua Glenn: interview with W. David Stephenson, a Medfield-based homeland security consultant who claims that ordinary citizens armed with wi-fi laptops, smart cellphones, and the like would be far more effective at responding to terrorist attacks than any governmental organization.