Dear tech billionaires: you seemed to be struggling with the idea, so I held a vivid proof-of-concept for EarthNationLive in New York, Los Angeles, & London last night

January 23rd, 2010

Hey,

Sergey Brin, Larry Page!

Morning, Pam and Pierre Omidyar!

Hi, Bill Gates!  Yo diggity, Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos,

Nathan Myrhvold! What it is, Larry Ellison?!

Did you see the EarthNationLive

demonstration on every

freaking channel in

the world last

night?

The final

tally isn’t in yet,

but it’s in the tens of

millions of dollars.  Evidently,

if you gathered some musicians together

and put on a show and asked the people of Earth

to help others and do good things, that would

actually work, and you could amass a giant

pile of money, which could be

used to shift things in the

direction of Mo’

Bettah.

The world

is witnessing an oft-repeated,

tragic scene in Haiti: chaos in the aftermath

of disaster. While technology increasingly helps predict

natural disasters, it remains glaringly absent in the aftermath of calamity.

But technology can be part of the solution to getting supplies and aid to victims

following a disaster. It is now possible that as soon as a disaster hits – not the next

day or in the next few hours, but literally minutes later – a Web-portal of the

affected regions could go live. The portal would display geo-referenced

village maps overlaid with demographic information, physical and

infrastructure facilities, the latest satellite imagery, and message

boards that allow for coordination and real-time information

exchange between relief agents at all levels, and for

affected individuals to provide real-time

accountability.

Within

minutes of a disaster

the world could know where it hit,

how many people are affected, where they are,

and how to get to them. Within hours, governments and

relief agencies could know what is needed, who is helping,

who is being helped and who is not. Such a

solution is not science fiction but

a feasible and immediate

reality.

Harvard

Kennedy School of

Government