You might remember the Tom Cruise Blockbuster from a few years back featuring a near-future technology in which murders can be prevented, thus arresting the pre-murderer. Of course it was all based on a super natural phenomenon on triplets submerged on water and isolated from society as to maintain them focused on their duties.
The idea of crime prevention might not be that far fetched after all. Of course we don’t know of any over gifted siblings that can foresee people’s destinies, but we do have a few aces under our sleeves now. Let’s look at the facts here.
Twitter rather than Facebook, is a much more instantaneous media than Facebook. For example, here in my city, traffic is getting worse and worse every day that goes by. My main tool to avoid cramped up bottle necks? Twitter on my BlackBerry. I simply type in a hash-tag with the city’s traffic channel and get wherever I want faster. Even lately, there has been a particular hash-tag that prevents people from getting into violent hot spots in the city, thus reporting any events that might have involved some sort of crime.
Groups on Facebook are formed so that can people can unite for a cause. We’ve seen the cases of Egypt, Libya and many other revolutions that are happening as you read this post. Tech Crunch just pulled out an article where Shervin Pishevar names both Social Networks to be the defenders or expression revolution. (Read more http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/shervin-pishevar-twitter-and-facebook-are-shields-against-future-genocides-tctv/)
Just this week on one of the “Morning Stream”‘s podcasts, a college student from Texas called the show to tell them about how the state’s government is considering the idea of allowing students carry guns to school. After so many events of shootings in schools across the globe, what defense can there be under such circumstances?
So you see, from “small” crime such as shootings, burglaries, etc up to entire nations going up in a revolution, social networks create a channel of communication & prevention. If you see something out of order, tweet it, Facebook it and there’s always someone that is monitoring hash-tags and publications. It might just be a great way to prevent violence, a channel of prevention; a Minority Report.