Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Robo-Calls
Today's News Trib has a good story about the robo-calls some of us got the other night.
The reaction the calls got is interesting, and serves in part as a bit of a personality test. I was a crime and courts reporter for many years, so when I get a call in the middle of the night, I worry about who they are calling about. None of us ever got a call like this before in Lakewood, so I worried who it was they were testing the system on.
One citizen who contacted me has an unlisted number. So when someone called in the middle of the night, she just assumed it was a call about her elderly mother. That scared her. I don't blame her.
BUT ... That said, of all people, I value this technology. Many of you know my mother had Lewy Body Disease, an awful version of Alzheimer's, for 10 years. My dad always worried she would get out of the home alone, which could have been horrible. Being able to tell a lot of people to look for her through this technology would have been a really good thing. My dad also had a rough period when he was dying of cancer and on strong medications. If he had wandered, I would have put out the same plea and begged officials to do whatever they could to find him.
The bigger question is, when do you think calls like this are appropriate? I've asked our city manager to ask the county folks what their ground rules are, so we can know. Again, of all people. I'm not questioning the value of this method. I'm just asking for what sorts of incidents can we expect these calls.
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! I owe some of you responses to good comments to posts below, and I will be working on that over the weekend. Right now, it's time to sneak out and get a birthday present for Cindy :)
4:40 update: News Tribune blog post has county reaction to the robo-calls.
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The reaction the calls got is interesting, and serves in part as a bit of a personality test. I was a crime and courts reporter for many years, so when I get a call in the middle of the night, I worry about who they are calling about. None of us ever got a call like this before in Lakewood, so I worried who it was they were testing the system on.
One citizen who contacted me has an unlisted number. So when someone called in the middle of the night, she just assumed it was a call about her elderly mother. That scared her. I don't blame her.
BUT ... That said, of all people, I value this technology. Many of you know my mother had Lewy Body Disease, an awful version of Alzheimer's, for 10 years. My dad always worried she would get out of the home alone, which could have been horrible. Being able to tell a lot of people to look for her through this technology would have been a really good thing. My dad also had a rough period when he was dying of cancer and on strong medications. If he had wandered, I would have put out the same plea and begged officials to do whatever they could to find him.
The bigger question is, when do you think calls like this are appropriate? I've asked our city manager to ask the county folks what their ground rules are, so we can know. Again, of all people. I'm not questioning the value of this method. I'm just asking for what sorts of incidents can we expect these calls.
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! I owe some of you responses to good comments to posts below, and I will be working on that over the weekend. Right now, it's time to sneak out and get a birthday present for Cindy :)
4:40 update: News Tribune blog post has county reaction to the robo-calls.
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Hmm... I agree it's a good technology, but is it one that's going to be getting less and less effective as people move away from traditional landline phones? Cell Phones, MagicJacks, Voice over IP; does the system account for these? I only have my cell phone, and I know I didn't get a call about this.
I don't know their plans for cell phones. It's a good question that I'll relay. Right now, I doubt if one method reaches everyone, or could. One can forsee a world where people commonly'opt in' to get news about their city and community in ways other than email, and that might be how this sort of thing gets spread in 5-10 years.
I don't seen an alternative. A lot of folks in Lakewood, particularly those connected with the military, don't have landlines and have a cell phone with an out-of-state area code. There'd be no way to know to call these phone numbers from Arkansas or Florida or whatever about a Lakewood issue. Hard to know how an emergency system could reach those folks unless they opted into something. Interesting issues.
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I don't seen an alternative. A lot of folks in Lakewood, particularly those connected with the military, don't have landlines and have a cell phone with an out-of-state area code. There'd be no way to know to call these phone numbers from Arkansas or Florida or whatever about a Lakewood issue. Hard to know how an emergency system could reach those folks unless they opted into something. Interesting issues.
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