humanitarian.info

The White African faces a quandary:

Global tools that have real time read/write access are extremely powerful. Depending on ones motives, your impact can be good or bad. Even if your motives are good, your tool can be used for bad. How’s that for a quandry?

It’s certainly a quandary, but not a new one. It’s the same question that’s been asked about humanitarian aid since at least the 1970s, and has been one of the motors behind the humanitarian reform process. What’s more interesting is the assumption behind that question, an assumption that he describes quite clearly:

Just decades ago those who were not in close enough proximity to an event were unable to do much, if anything about it. Today, we can successfully effect change through digital tools and be thousands of miles away.

As I wrote in the comments, neither of these statements is quite true. Decades ago you could have joined Amnesty International campaign, or given money to a relief agency, or written to your MP; these options are still available, and will make a difference. The problem we have today is that many people feel that such actions don’t make enough of a difference - that they don’t have a big enough impact, or they don’t bring change quickly enough.

We have to start being honest, though; just because the internet works reliably and at high speeds, it doesn’t mean that humans work at similarly high speeds or with similar reliability. The impact of our actions will almost never be immediate, and will frequently lead to outcomes that we didn’t predict. Our expectations have been raised by the relentless cheerleading for the information revolution, and we need to lower those expectations or risk alienating people who want to get involved.

The real questions are the same ones that I ask myself in my own work whenever I approach a new project. What decision or action will this information inform, and who is responsible for making that decision or taking that action? The answers to those questions determine a) whether it’s worth collecting the information in the first place, and b) what we will do with the information once we’ve collected it. Unless we answer those questions clearly, and build our systems around them, we’re unlikely to effect any significant change, no matter how powerful our tools are.

(For a bit more on Ushaidi, Sanjana has a great interview with Ory Okollah, in which she explains clearly that the site has been used as an information-gathering tool, rather than a resource for conflict mitigation or resolution. Just to be clear, I think Ushaidi is absolutely worthwhile - but I’m looking forward to what comes next.)