January 15, 2005
Science & Technology:
Some quick thoughts on the so-called Information Age
By Jack GrantFrom CNN.com:
Feds: Quecreek miner's map misfiled
Map could have prevented accidentSaturday, January 15, 2005 Posted: 11:02 AM EST (1602 GMT)
UPPER ST. CLAIR, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A map of an abandoned mine that might have prevented a flood that trapped nine miners underground for 77 hours had been tucked away in a coal company closet and forgotten, a government report shows.
The nine-man team of miners working in the Quecreek mine in July 2002 had an outdated map that didn't show the exact location of the adjacent Saxman mine, which was filled with millions of gallons of water.
The miners pierced the wall of the Saxman mine, quickly filling part of the Quecreek mine with water and trapping the miners. Crews were eventually able to pull them out one-by-one in a dramatic rescue that made international headlines.
I see this every day in my job; information already exists that would help avoid problems (or disasters), yet it is not readily available to those who need it. In some cases, the unavailibility is due to appropriate systems not being in place to allow the information to be distributed, in other cases the information is "lost" similar to the case described by CNN above regarding the miners.
This is the key problem of our so-called Information Age. Information is useless unless it is not only available to those who need it, but also those who need it must be aware of it for the information to actually be of any use. This need for awareness is usually forgotten in the efforts to streamline and improve the distribution of data, but I suspect that eventually it will be regarded as key.
Now, how do we fix the problem?
Posted by Jack Grant at 20:32 on 15 January 2005
