The ARC: Personal notes

A few things have happened in the past such that I no longer think of this as an active project. It has been undercut too many times.

Even so, I will advocate the idea to whomever can implement it when the opportunity presents itself. Maybe, someday, it will be done before a disaster and really save lives by allowing victims to SMS where they are in a disaster. It would allow a startup system of communication with volunteers.

And implemented with different numbers, it could allow civil society to coordinate efforts better in the field - again, saving more lives.

The Caribbean

Within the Caribbean region, even after the article, people who were aware of the project got funding to look into something similar - something like $100K - and when I confronted them about it (V.K, R.K) by email, they refused to even look at something that cost less than $10K because the funding apparently wouldn't be enough... for some reason.

CARICOM, the Caribbean and Latin America NGOs left a very bad taste in my mouth because of this and other reasons.

The United States/Developed World

I beat the drum for some time on this, hitting a crescendo around Hurricane Katrina. I got email introduced to Scoble, then a Microsoft sort of person, and it just died right there.

Africa

Of all the nations, Africa seems to have gotten it. You can read about what they've done with Haiti (in the Caribbean!) here.

And even then, the system was implemented as a reaction from Ushahidi after the fact when really... such systems should be in place already. They did what others didn't do because... others didn't do it in advance.

And around the world, people don't smell the smoke until the flames are licking their posteriors.