City 'command centers': Better than Twitter?

IBM's latest product is "command centers" for mayors of cities around the world, to help them quickly get news and respond to the needs of their cities. Couldn't they just use Twitter?

|
Mal Langsdon/Reuters/File
The official Twitter page of France's President Nicolas Sarkozy is seen on a computer screen in Paris in this file photo. IBM is introducing a new social network and news aggregate for city leaders, but Kahn argues that with some tweaking, Twitter could easily fill that role.

The NY Times has a long piece about IBM's new business as it supplies "Command Centers" for mayors of cities around the world.   The article suggests that each Mayor seeks to be a benevolent leader (think of Ike during WW II) but that due to transaction costs was unable to know in real time how a particular crisis was playing out across the city's geography.  By providing real time information to the "leader", IBM is helping cities to cope with new news and shocks.

I agree with all of this but the reporter downplays the main benefit of providing high quality information in cities. Individuals (not mayors) now make better choices and in aggregate the city is healthier and more robust in the face of shocks.   You don't have to be Hayek to believe that the real payoff of the IBM technology is to allow the government to play the role of impartial data provider and then allow individuals to make their own best choices of how they want to adapt and cope with new news. If crime is rising in a certain slum in Rio, rental prices will adjust --- people will no longer move there and will choose to locate in a different part of the city.

As economists have shown in many cases such as Smog Alerts and restaurant public health ratings,  individuals change their behavior as they are provided with new information and they change their behavior so that to reduce their exposure to risk and disamenities.

It is of course the case that a Mayor who has real time information about a crisis may allocate resources more effectively but I do not believe in a Superman theory of history.  The reporter  appears to believe that Mayors are benevolent paternalists who seek to protect their citizens but lack information about the real time challenges they face.   I wish we lived in that world.

In truth, decentralized twitter updates are likely to provide pretty close to the same services (for free!) that IBM is supplying at a price of billion of dollars.  People such as Guru Banavar at IBM should explain under what conditions would his "smart grid" for the Mayor outperform twitter?
For decentralized twitter to be equally effective as IBM, all Twitter would need is an aggregator that allows you search tweets based on subject and date such as "storm, Rio, March 22nd 2012" .

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to City 'command centers': Better than Twitter?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Green-Economics/2012/0305/City-command-centers-Better-than-Twitter
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe