Educational Origami

As I drove to work this morning I was informed of the unfolding drama in Mumbai. The reports were vague and like most radio news article on the 1/2 hour.  But these and television reports are not the only information sources available.

Twitter is providing a crowdsourcing feed of information. Someone, who knows who it is, has set up the twitter feed mumbaiattack. They are providing regular updates, at a rate that is quicker than other media including the BBC’s Latest News. The twitter feed announce the holding of hostages and this was posted on the BBC’s site 40 minutes later.

This is hugely powerful, but fraught with risk and concern. The information must be taken as completely unvalidated as we have no idea who the author is, the veracity of the information sources, the neutrality of the prespective etc. But as we saw in the Earthquake in the Sichuan province of China the power of Twitter in pushing information out at a rate impossible for the traditional news media.

As I have watch the @mumbaiattack twitter feed the number of followers is steadily growing.