Filipino Quote Immortalized in Int’l Journal
“There is no greater innovation that matters more than that which saves lives.”
Nothing really profound; I was just pleasantly surprised to see a Pinoy’s quote deliver the conclusion to the article Open Source Software for Disaster Management written by Currion, de Silva, and Van de Walle for the Communications of the ACM March 2007 issue. The final line in its entirety:
Only in this way will FOSS applications such as Sahana grow and mature to fulfill the real needs of humanitarian assistance, and live up to the expectations that Avelino J. Cruz Jr., Secretary of National Defense in the Philippines, expressed when discussing the deployment of Sahana in response to the Leyte landslide disaster in early 2006: “There is no greater innovation that matters more than that which saves lives.”
Sahana is “a free and open source disaster management information system developed in Sri Lanka in the immediate aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami”. It was deployed by the Philippine government, with the support of the IBM country team, in response to the 2006 mudslides.
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May 4th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Great… now if only we could stop the church from meddling with innovations and progress.
May 4th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
cool, bakit parang di ko ata nabasa yan.. hmm.
May 5th, 2007 at 12:13 am
*Marks as [this is good]*
(You know that Vox feature, right?)
Which explains why doctors and lawyers are the most respected people in the world. I wish there weren’t any competition among careers, but I can’t help feeling small when compared in that respect. Not that I have to worry about it to such a great degree. This post calls for comments ala-Slippy.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Lawyers are respected?
The landslide operation was actually a success? I guess we can all blame the media for sensationalizing and painting a picture of gloom and doom instead.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Michael, I personally believe that the Church should still play a significant role in state affairs (stab me, separation-of-church-and-state purists) but not to the point of dictating what needs to be carried out and what isn’t. Case in point: birth control. I once heard a priest say in a sermon, “Don’t believe the birth control efforts of the Government. Just go forth and multiply!”
Nightfox, sometimes the academic text buries any casual reader (e.g. moi) interest, hehe. Muntik ko na nga ring ma-iskipan e.
Ia, comments ala-Slippy? I wish
Historically, the other blog has generated the most insightful and numerous comments I’ve ever received. Which is why, even after Slippy’s near abandonments and all, this pseudo-tech blog remains second fiddle to the lit/writing blog.
Benj, to a certain extent, I guess. Or maybe begrudging respect. (In my case, my dad is a lawyer, so I know first-hand that not all barristers hurl Legalese at each other and innocent bystanders just to muddle this world up :P)
Re: the landslide operation, I’m not too sure about that, too. The article was of course just happy to list down the events when Sahana was deployed, without much discourse regarding the rescue/emergency operations themselves.