Sat Com as Disaster Resiliency fails.
Samuel 17 Alexandra 9-5-2017 "Does the Internet Help or Harm Our Ability to Weather Natural
Disasters?' https://daily.jstor.org/does-the-internet-help-or-harm-our-ability-to-weather-naturaldisasters/ (Alexandra Samuel is a technology writer, researcher and speaker. She is the author of Work
Smarter with Social Media (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), and is a regular contributor to the
Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal. Alex holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from
Harvard University and a B.A. from Oberlin College. You can find her on Twitter as @awsamuel and on
her own site, alexandrasamuel.com.)//Elmer
Yet in its very helpfulness, the internet and mobile technology
can lull us into a false sense of security . That’s particularly
problematic. When the technologies themselves are so prone to failure in the event of crisis. As Garnett and Kouzmin write: As with the 9/11
terrorist attacks, the Katrina catastrophe showcased the vulnerabilities of communications technology. While some successes occurred, much
of the communications infrastructure was made useless by water, winds, or mismanagement. Landline and cellular telephone service was
virtually nonexistent for days because of flooding, power outages, and even theft of equipment….Attempts to get these systems back online
were delayed by fuel shortages, conflicting demands for resources and lack of communication itself. Citizens largely lacked means of
communicating pleas for help except in person. The toppling of cell towers, cutting of fiber-optic cables, and other devastation also frustrated
relief efforts. Technology failures also hampered the response and rescue efforts. The dangers these failures pose begin long before disaster
strikes. In their article about hurricane preparedness among undergraduates, Simms et al. argue that:
it may be reasonable to
assume that students believe that any necessary information will be made available in the event of an
approaching storm, regardless of the unpredictability of storm track and strength; that is, the Internet,
university officials, parents, the media, or other sources will provide information with sufficient lead
time, making preparations well ahead of time needless and thus more costly than what they are
considered to be worth. In other words, for those growing up with the assumption of always-on
information, the very idea of an unexpected event feels truly unimaginable. When Tech Fails Nor is this kind of tech
blindness restricted to the young. In their analysis of the response to Hurricane Katrina, Garnett and Kouzmin
criticize the way House and Senate commissions blamed communications issues in disaster response on
“technology inoperability or, to a lesser extent, interoperability,” narrowly understood. As they write: This
view overlooks or diminishes the multitude of problems
of interpersonal conflicts and behaviors, media
expediency, and interorganizational culture differences or turf battles. If this posture leads to preoccupation
with producing a “technological fix” to prepare communication for the next disaster, multiple problems would
remain . For example, FEMA would still have culture clashes with the Department of Homeland
Security and would be technology rich and competence poor. Intergovernmental relations would still lack the trust
and working relationships that have worked well in the past.….Communications technologies can be made more
weather resistant, more interoperable, and more reliable, but they still need to be complemented by a
diverse range of highand low-tech communication strategies and the ingenuity to compensate for
communication failures. Americans have been shown to be too fond of technofixes, whether in
medicine, management, or communication. The official post-Katrina investigations indicate that that American national
government is still fixated with technology. We like to believe that even when technology fails to prevent disaster, it can still bail us out in our
moment of need. And if it fails us then, it’s not our dependence on technology that’s the problem—it’s some problem with the technology
itself. But in disaster preparedness and response, as in many aspects of our technologized world, the real culprit is what’s referred to as
PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. What’s between keyboard and chair? We are: the users. As technology users, we have
placed our faith in technology—even to the extent of expecting technology to deliver us from the very problem of climate change, which drives
more and more of our natural disasters. But the value of technology in solving human problems (including human-made natural disasters) lies
in its ability to connect humans together. The solutions technology enables are only as strong as the humans it connects. And in a moment of
disaster—when communities either come together, or fracture apart—we find out how strong those humans, and those connections, really
are.