by Amanda Gomez

I’m currently reading Peter Thiel’s Zero to One, a book that discloses Thiel’s own insight on “how to build the future.” He emphasizes vertical or intensive progress, meaning actually doing something new, rather than succumbing to horizontal extensive progress, copying things that already work. I begin with this because for me, sensor journalism is vertical progress. It’s inventive, creative, technology-driven but also risky, complicated, and potentially messy. Lily Bui’s presentation on sensor journalism kickstarted my excitement. She said we were going to partake in an experiment, an experiment even many established journalists have not yet embarked on. 
This amazing opportunity had presented itself to me, and naturally I was terrified of the results. As Stan Lee so famously put it, with great power comes great responsibility. And for me it became with great sensor/data power comes great availability. Following Lily’s presentation, and amiss the sensor journalism endeavors she had introduced to the class, most notably the WNYC Cicada Radio Tracker, various concerns were raised. Maybe it was Kate Crawford’s big data lecture or my inner Snowden speaking, but questions pertaining to accessibly and overreaching became inevitable. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to learn that I could potentially acquire my own data, using affordable tools. But I can’t neglect my skepticism. 
In general terms, I couldn’t help but be wary of depending solely on technology to acquire my data on the general public. Margin of error seemed to inevitable. The Street Bump application is the perfect example of my hesitation. The application was dependent on consumers to provide data on themselves by marking potholes in the app. It became a very helpful app if you were a consumer in Brookline, Downtown, etc. It wasn’t as helpful if you were a user in Roxbury, Dorchestor, Matapan, etc. It’s easy to make the assumption that everyone has a smartphone, but the reality is, not everyone does. Even now, many of my 20 something year old friends and family members are without smartphones for financial reasons. I don’t want to say the application is therefore useless, because clearly it benefits a certain demographic. My own problem is that it’s not entirely inclusive, which appears to be a larger theme when thinking about sensor journalism and big data. 
 We have this amazing idea, but the question became, how do we include more people in on this amazing idea.
Referring back to Peter Thiel’s book, when PayPal first launch in 1998, journalists called it one of the 10 worst business ideas of 1999. It depended initially on PalmPilots, which were to exotic, not accessible to everyone. Eventually they changed their initial product and decided to create a way to send and receive payment over email. Yes, internet was still new and not accessible to everyone, but by changing the product from PalmPilot to email, it allowed for potentially a larger clientele. And as we know, PayPal, with a lot more added functions and a growing, vertical process business model, it became very successful. 
Going back to sensor journalism, a brilliant idea, but an idea that also can potentially have a narrow audience scope: for example, Public Lab’s Riffle, a water monitoring conductor that I was able to use for my Data Visualization class. The idea is communities will have access to the Riffle and then will be able to monitor their own water, check conductivity. Using the Riffle in class was an amazing opportunity. The excitement in the classroom was unwavering, and I believe a lot was learned from the experiment. Yes, plenty of hypothesis were made, and yes, it’s difficult to be certain of anything still; however, that didn’t take away from the momentous feeling it brought. I was doing something new: new to me, new to Emerson, new to the journalism community. 
My only concern again is accessibility to the larger community. Though it seems like one can buy the Riffle parts at a local hardware store, I suppose my question is how one can do it alone. Thankfully I had the support of the classroom, and three experts on the Riffle, and yes I say expert knowing it is still a working progress even to those supposed people. The main idea here is in the classroom, we worked together. It’s difficult to imagine a lone journalist doing this, and it’s even harder to imagine a community member, who is completely removed from all of this, doing the experiment. This is very experimental now, and I understand that, but eventually it needs to be concrete and user friendly so a larger audience can utilize this amazing tool. Something like this, I believe, requires a team right now because it’s a bit complicated—it is still too exotic. What I’m saying is, we need to go from PalmPilot to email for this to really launch off. Despite the kinks that need to be worked out, I give plenty of credit to people who are venturing in this uncharted territory. 
Shifting gears, another aspect of sensor journalism I want to reflect on because I’m fascinated by it is civilian drones, and how it can be used for news gathering. Just last week, the Federal Aviation Administration granted permission to six film and television production companies to use their own unmanned aircraft over existing federal regulations. Meaning certain Hollywood members could use civilian drones for the production of their movies. U.S. journalism drones are very much uncharted territory, as the Tow Report on Sensor Journalism states, a small number of organizations are using footage shot by drones. The reasons being, drones have a negative connotation attached to them. Clearing safety risks are evident, privacy concerns seem to be on everyone’s mind considering the NSA overreach and hacking of various trusted organizations. Everyone’s paranoid. But I think, that as long as the story dictates the use of drones, it can be done tastefully. NPR’s Planet Money and it’s use of the cinematography drones is a prime example of how it can be done well. Their Make A T-Shirt campaign was extremely successful, and I believe a lot of the execution was made possible with the drones. 
Ultimately, this leads me to my essential take-away of sensor journalism: don’t let the sensor be the craft, let the sensor help the craft. It’s easy to be mesmerized by all of it, and not question its possibility. But by just accepting the status quo, it could lead to mistakes and predictability. So I think instead, journalists need to remain curious, skeptic always. But ultimately, utilize the technology around for fear of being left behind. We want to be in charge of our own data, sensor journalism can be how.