It's about 6:05 a.m. and I've already been up for two hours. During the first hour of those two hours my wife and I were rushing to bring the kids downstairs into the hallway in preparation for what might have been a tornado. Both her and I woke up to the wind gusting and howling out of nowhere slamming objects against our windows before even one drop of rain fell. As soon as it started the power was blown out; I was just about to jump online to view the radar and see if there were any warnings posted for our area.
For a split second as I stood in front of my computer in the darkness I felt lost, confused, and disconnected. How was I going to get the latest updates on the weather? How would I get in touch with family and friends in town if something did happen? Would it be too late for me if something was happening and I was not informed? Thoughts like this ran through my mind in the split second that I stood there in frustration.
Instantly it hit me! I have a Pocket PC phone from Sprint that most certainly would work without a land connection. I quickly opened both Twitter and the Weather Channel to get the latest updates and two things happened. First the Weather Channel was quick to inform me that we were indeed under tornado watch until 9:00 a.m. Secondly the community in Twitter was alive. Local twits were streaming back and forth from those in the area regarding the storm, updates from different parts of town, and those that still had power in outlying areas were feeding us information as well. It was simply amazing.
As I sat in the hallway with my wife and kids I thought on the relevance of being "connected" to the digital world, whether it's an online community, or via social networking sites. What may seem irrelevant or trivial has become a vital part of how we communicate, and in this instance there was a comforting feeling knowing that in my area alone the community was active and there for one another.
Reflect on this in a much larger scale, the cyclone in Myanmar or the earthquakes in China. Both of these were reported on Twitter via the news feed before the news hit any of the major news outlets (CNN, FoxNews, USAToday), both TV and online. Those that survived the disasters surely found themselves disconnected in every way from the world, yet there are a few who were able to report and document the disasters as the assisted with the rescues or moved to shelters for aid. This slice of life reporting is news you don't get from the big outlets, but we who are connected get the latest updates thanks to our hard-line and mobile connections to the digital world.
Photo Credit, David Arky
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