Technology Wouldn't Have Stopped Virginia Tech Massacre And Thinking So Is Our Sickness

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian at New York University, cautions news organizations not to rush to judge officials at Virginia Tech or to suggest that technology would have prevented the killing spree. Perhaps I'm guilty of that -- I penned a piece entitled Lessons from Virginia Tech: A Disaster Alert System that Works.

I tried to stay away from proposing that technology is a panacea for preventing senseless tragedies, while still highlighting ways that tech innovations could be harnessed to help make individuals sense of the information chaos that catastrophes bring. Regardless of whether I was able to stay on that tightrope in my piece, Siva's thoughts are worth your time.

After 9/11 we wasted billions on biometric and data-mining technologies to protect ourselves from rare and limited dangers like hijackings, anthrax epidemics and chemical weapon attacks. Yet we defunded efforts to attack real killers like cancer and real lifesavers like public transportation.

Virginia Tech, being one of the most wired and technologically sophisticated places on Earth, certainly could have designed an emergency alert plan that pushed limited yet essential information to students before 9 a.m. Monday. At least it could have used technology at hand — phone messages, e-mail and radio — to spread the news an hour earlier.

But we must be careful and not too far with this analysis. University officials had no reason to believe this was anything but a shooting of two people over a personal disagreement until the shooter opened fire in classrooms two hours later.

So let's wait for more information. Let's seek wisdom rather than shallow punditry. Let's recognize that event such as Monday's shooting are very rare. Let's admit that there is almost nothing we can do to prevent them. And let's recognize that the deep, dark and complex workings of our minds and souls have more to do with such events than any particular technology does.

Via Boing Boing