Two years ago I started working on a project called crowdSOS. In 140 characters or less: crowdSOS crowdsources safety and security allowing users to report local incidents, visualize the reports, and derive insights helping them make smarter decisions on safety.
You can read more about crowdSOS app here. The app was developed both for the Apple iPhone and Android platforms and is available on the app store and google play.
As an app that relies on a collaborative model, network effects, and serving as a platform for users to engage in reporting behavior, crowdSOS is the quintessential web 2.0 software as described by Tim O’Reilly. Additionally, when designing and building the app, we did not foresee this to be an open source project, at least not immediately. But we took steps to make it collaborative for our own ease of development and maintenance – modular design, APIs, and putting code on github. Our goal was to make it easy for our developers to work together and create features that can be easily integrated into the crowdSOS system and built upon it – in essence making it a platform for collaborative work. This architecture of participation emerged naturally, much like the web2.0’ness of the crowdSOS app. The current architecture and workings of the web and demand from the users naturally push developers to adopt these basic web2.0 tenets. This design also helped us turn crowdSOS into an open source project which we made available publicly on github.
The current democratic nature of the internet allows many social entrepreneurs, like myself, freedom to pursue projects that give us a platform to speak. We can take advantage of the internet to reach to billions of people on the internet. With enough drive (and luck) we can start a movement that can rival the biggest of conglomerates or authoritarian governments. The recent debate about net neutrality threatens to take away these freedoms. With no net neutrality rules, we will create an autocratic internet where the big players get bigger ‘pipes’ of bandwidth because of their financial muscle. If net neutrality is taken away, apps like crowdSOS will be buried deep in the abyss because sites like netflix, google, and facebook will hog the bandwidth. Forget crowdSOS, a free site like wikipedia will wither away because the wikimedia foundation cannot afford to compete with large conglomerates and corporations. Net neutrality guarantees the tenets of the freedom of information act and must be maintained and fought at all costs.
Another trend, the filter bubble, also threatens the democratic nature of the internet. In essence, when you use Google, Yahoo, or Bing (seriously!?) the search results are filtered on the basis of 57 indicators that uniquely define you. So what you see on the internet search is catered for you alone. While this may seem relevant, it implies that Google is making decisions on what they believe you want to see. The results can be easily tweaked to reveal what Google or any other entity wants you to read or believe and even feel. The recent reveal offacebook experiment is a case in point. No matter if the organization’s motto is not to be evil, such concentration of power is dangerous.
While i do believe that resistance is futile when it comes to privacy in this hyperconnected world, we can take steps to maintain the democratic nature of the internet and keep it relevant for us and future generations. Until next time.
Ali S. Kamil 