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19 July 2006 13 Comments

Defeating Hezbollah: Enter Web 2.0

We talk alot about technology here at Technosailor, and indeed, we also like politics and debate on current events as well. As I was sitting down to enjoy a delicious meal of Rice a Roni and Gatorade, I flipped on the news. Tangent: The absurdity of 24 hours news is that once a story is old (but not old enough to let it go), reporters start asking stupid questions. A Fox news reporter was near the location of where a Hezbollah missile had hit Haifa a few minutes before and the anchor asked, “What were you thinking when you heard the rocket coming in?” Duh…

So, needless to say, the situation is a novel one and requires a novel solution. The problem presented to Israel is that Hezbolla guerrillas hide among the civilians making it impossible at times to make a discerning effort to limit collateral damage. But with all the technology we have and the economic boom that the internet is providing via all these Web 2.0 companies showing up everywhere, I wonder if the answer to the conflict might not be in social technologies.

Think about it. Flickr is made popular not because you can show your friends your photos just as the solution to the middle east crisis isn’t made simple by Israeli bombs carpeting southern Lebanon. The novelty (not so much anymore) of Flickr is that people can store their photos and tags them. That means that doing a tag search on Flickr will pull up the photos that I tag a certain way as well as others who have done similar.

And what about RSS. RSS makes content dispersion crazily simple. You can now do searches at places like Technorati and subscribe to an RSS feed of your search. It makes it infinitely easier to know when something new pops up on your search radar without having to actively search for it.

Perhaps the solution to the middle east crisis is in social networking. We only have to “tag” Hezbollah gorillas, do a quick little search on “hezbollah+guerillas” and bam, no need for collateral damage. Instantly find exactly what we want to find and nothing else.

We could encourage the Mossad to subscribe to the “Hezbollah and Hamas members” feed and instantly know as soon as a new terrorist comes on board.

Maybe Hezbollah would agree to using Google Calendar to plan their “events” so we can all show up?

Perhaps setting up a Plazes account would settle issues. Israeli and Hezbollah brothers can reconnect after years apart. There has to be a place for MySpace as well. No better way to get peoples mind off war except to find friends to show off pictures of drunk sorority girls.

Just a thought. I think this internet thing might be useful after all.

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Written by Aaron Brazell on July 19, 2006

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13 Responses to “Defeating Hezbollah: Enter Web 2.0”

  1. Stephan 19 July 2006 at 3:02 pm #

    The only problem is that Hezbollah likes to “migle” with civilians so you can’t tag them by themselves.

  2. Stephan 19 July 2006 at 3:02 pm #

    The only problem is that Hezbollah likes to “migle” with civilians so you can’t tag them by themselves.

  3. Mike Basten 19 July 2006 at 6:29 pm #

    Yeah, no high res on that map but from the looks of it you probably know your way around the valley :)

    Totally going to wordcamp… should be a blast. We are going to bring our bus.

    Giving you some link love.

  4. Aaron 19 July 2006 at 6:32 pm #

    Heh, Mike. Good deal. Hopefully I’ll figure out who you are in 350 people… :p

  5. Mike Basten 19 July 2006 at 6:39 pm #

    Look for the two young guys that look completely out of place/lost/like they have been living in a bus for two months… we’ll have to exchange comments closer to the date.

    Starting to dig into your blog here… there’s some really good stuff here.

    Mike

  6. Aaron 19 July 2006 at 6:41 pm #

    Subscribe to my feed :)

  7. Mike Basten 19 July 2006 at 6:29 pm #

    Yeah, no high res on that map but from the looks of it you probably know your way around the valley :)

    Totally going to wordcamp… should be a blast. We are going to bring our bus.

    Giving you some link love.

  8. Aaron 19 July 2006 at 6:32 pm #

    Heh, Mike. Good deal. Hopefully I’ll figure out who you are in 350 people… :p

  9. Mike Basten 19 July 2006 at 6:39 pm #

    Look for the two young guys that look completely out of place/lost/like they have been living in a bus for two months… we’ll have to exchange comments closer to the date.

    Starting to dig into your blog here… there’s some really good stuff here.

    Mike

  10. Aaron 19 July 2006 at 6:41 pm #

    Subscribe to my feed :)

  11. Ron 27 July 2006 at 1:51 am #

    never thought that you could compare hezbollah to flickr but I guess I was wrong. This is some good stuff.

  12. Ron 27 July 2006 at 1:51 am #

    never thought that you could compare hezbollah to flickr but I guess I was wrong. This is some good stuff.


Trackbacks/Pingbacks.

  1. Airline Security: Enter Web 2.0 » Technology, Blogging and New Media - 11. Aug, 2006

    [...] You might remember a few weeks ago, this blog offered the solution to the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict using Web 2.0 applications like Flickr and Technorati. It is unfortunate that senior policy makers have not seen the wisdom offered in that post. [...]