Wyland Foundation - Hands Across the Oceans Wyland Log

Well, of course not. There's no way a website can cure a disease; but help in ways doctors, scientists, and -- most importantly -- patients never thought of: absolutely! If you are not familiar with Twitter; it's a site dedicated to the question: what are you doing [now]? Maybe it was the AIM status, or Facebook status, or just the disparate places you could currently go to, to tell your friends, family & networks exactly what you are doing right now. But the places Twitter has popped up as a result of an easy to implement open API is staggering.

Just a few examples are needed to see where something as simple as a 140 characters broadcast to the world can impact things both close and far (very far away). Actually let's start with far. The Phoenix Mars Lander has a twitter feed. To get that feed you just subscribe at twitter.com/MarsPhoenix or send a text message to 40404; you'll receive a confirmation. And soon thereafter, you'll start receiving updates on the status of the lander. From Mars, to your phone, or wherever you'd like to consume twitter updates (meaning pretty much anywhere on Earth), you will be "in the know." Sure, only a small part of our culture wishes to track a Mars probe; maybe the same type of person who might have been interested in ham radios; but this is interplanetary.

And there are earthly inventive implementations of twitter too. Take "Botanicalls Twitter," a kit that allows you to connect a plant moisture monitoring device to a Mac or a PC that "tells" twitter when your plant needs watering. It's not easy to set up. It's big, arguably impractical; but it set a precedent for a whole new way to leverage Web 2.0. And when it's set up, it let's you know the status of that favorite plant. That plant can actually thank you in words. Really, it does that. I can't imagine monitoring all the plants in an apartment, let alone a green house. But where a concept like this leads could be far more important.

Not ready to sign up? What if twitter could set you free (literally). Ask James Karl Buck about the importance of twitter and social networking; and you might start to appreciate simple web sites, that perform gracefully under very heavy traffic; and focus well on the little things like your status. Especially if that status is "Arrested." That was his status while traveling in Egypt; and that status was the trigger to a chain of events that lead to his eventual release. His twitter network caught the message and his university hired a lawyer. His story is amazing; even if twitter just accelerated his path to freedom. Though it would seem the masses of people interested in his status amplified his cause.

From Wikipedia: The service rapidly gained popularity and in March 2007 won the 2007 South by Southwest Web Award in the blog category. Jack Dorsey, widely acknowledged as the man behind the concept of Twitter, gave the following playful acceptance speech at SXSW: "We'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"

Okay, but diseases like diabetes? Can Twitter impact those too? To start we would have to combine some of the gadget-based inventiveness with some of the social responsiveness referenced above. Then mix in the vested interest all sufferers, of any disease like diabetes, have to see that disease eradicated. Twitter is really just a platform for communication. It can be bidirectional, even asynchronous; all thanks to a very robust open application programming interface (API).

We should talk about who might be a broadcaster and who might be a subscriber. This is the big "what if." What if the device that a diabetes patient used to measure blood sugar levels had the capacity to connect to the internet. Directly via WiFi, or indirectly through bluetooth; this could be difficult, especially if you were trying to fit that functionality into a pen. But just assume for now that it's possible (I bet Apple could do it). The broadcaster is the patient. The patient takes a reading; and that reading becomes a "tweet." It becomes a part of the history of tweets under that patients twitter account. I should mention here that twitter does have a concept and storage for past updates.

The subscriber could be your doctor. Real time access to your readings; with the possibility to track trends and the knowledge to interpret those trends. If automated from the reading device through to twitter, an on-call physician might be a subscribe. Maybe the nurse practitioner, too. A loved one who's monitoring a family member. A parent, or a teacher, or a fitness instructor. There a lot of potential subscribers; and many people to invite. The last invite might be the kicker: institutions. Not just the ADA; maybe the CDC and anyone else in need of direct and free, anonymous data.

In a world of choices; would you gravitate towards a device like this?

Resources:

Mars Rover Twitter:

http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

Mars Rover Official site:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/main.php

Botanicalls:

http://www.botanicalls.com/twitter/

James Karl Buck's story on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/index.html