At a Printing Industry staff meeting in Pennsylvania on Tuesday August 23, the earthquake shook the building for a few long seconds. As most people recounted, the tremor was fast and not much happened even while buildings in DC and other places were evacuated for safety and security reasons. We later learned that the quake made Virginian history as the epicenter while it was felt in a dozen states and several provinces in Canada. Damage was recorded; but in light of huge devastation in other earthquake sites, I will not discuss the damages associated with the earthquake.
But a different kind of history was made in the Internet realm. Only eight minutes passed before the 2011 Virginia earthquake was written up in Wikipedia. That is amazing! Here is the Washington Post article talking about this and the people involved. http://prnt.in/ZSa According to the WP article, over 80K people viewed it at publication. Newspapers can never really compete with these numbers!
Alvaro Duran is one of 88K regular volunteer contributors to Wikipedia and he was the first to write a quick sentence and a link to the US Geological Survey. Later he and others added to the page and the Wikipedia link is over 7 pages long. Here is the Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Virginia_earthquake
While I am regularly amazed at the recent disclosures of social media’s role in flash mobs, rioting, anti-government rallies, this nearly instant update to Wikipedia gives us a continuing picture of the transformation of the Internet and communication.
I bet for Alvaro Duran, a master’s degree student, his role in this story will be one of his milestones in his career. Cheers for his role in making written history! Wikipedia shares the spotlight in this history of the VA earthquake.