Murders, muggings, mayhem! While social media usually shows us a filtered and sanitised reality, Andrew Frame, the founder of Citizen, is harnessing 911 data to deliver a raw, live feed of crime and chaos directly to you. Is it the future of public safety or just a 21st-century police scanner?
With a tap of the screen, a smartphone can quickly deliver most of our basic desires—food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, sex.
Citizen founder Andrew Frame, a former hacker who earned tens of millions moonlighting for a few days at fledgling Facebook, thinks he can add to our phones one more essential human need—personal safety. “We’re all walking around with supercomputers in our pockets that have location technology and live video capabilities,” says Frame. “There must be something more we can do.”
At his startup’s unlisted headquarters in New York City’s Little Italy, young employees sip coffee from Citizen-branded mugs and watch chaos and crime unfold across America. A child is abducted in Philadelphia; a cop car hits a 15-year-old in Baltimore; there’s a stabbing in Los Angeles, a fire in New York.
Citizen’s offices are crammed with desks stacked high with widescreen monitors and feel like a cross between an air-traffic-control room and a Wall Street trading floor. Analysts in their 20s and early 30s listen to buzzing audio clips through clamshell headphones, their eyes bolted to streaming text chats and flashing city maps. Fingers fly across keys as they toggle between tragedies, blast out safety alerts, share videos and post incident updates to Citizen users who are physically near the morning’s calamities.
“We’ve opened up all this 911 data and given it to the people,” says Frame, who, tall and trim, wearing a baseball cap and a broken-in blue plaid shirt, looks a decade younger than his 39 years. “Before this, you had to go to the police academy to access real-time crime or be a firefighter to get access to fires. The people deserve to have this information too—in real time.”
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 30, 2019 من Forbes India.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 30, 2019 من Forbes India.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Home-Cooked Meal Is Now Greatly Valued
The pandemic has also brought with it an improved focus on hygiene, use of technology in dining, rise of cloud kitchens and resurgence in popularity of Indian ingredients
Paytm 3.0 - Reaching Near Breakeven In Two Years
As of 2020, Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s super app for financial services had run up losses in thousands of crores. Now, as digital payments gets yet another boost courtesy Covid-19, he’s hopeful of reaching near breakeven in two years
THE PANDEMIC HAS CAUSED WOMEN GREATER LABOUR PAIN
Covid-19 has shown that women are more likely to face the brunt of job losses than men, and find fewer opportunities when they want to resume. That apart, several have to deal with increased hours of unpaid work at home and even domestic abuse
LEADERSHIP WILL BE ABOUT SEEING THE BIGGER PICTURE
Leaders must not only guard their teams first during a crisis, but also deal with stakeholders with respect and dignity. And apart from pursuing business goals, they should remain committed to our planet and the environment
PHILANTHROPY SHOULD BE HUMBLE, BUT NOT MODEST
Apart from building a flexible and resilient framework for the future, philanthropists, civil society and the government must work in tandem so that every rupee is absorbed on the ground
INTEGRATED HEALTH CARE, TECH WILL DISRUPT SECTOR
While clinical research will get a boost, having a skilled workforce and public spending on health care will be challenges in the near term
DIGITALISATION WILL HELP IN VALUE CREATION
As the pandemic brings technology and innovation to the core of business and daily life, the next decade will see about 150 million digital-first families in India
Industry 4.0: Climate Revolution?
Augmenting sustainability alongside digital capabilities is an economic, competitive and global opportunity for India’s businesses, but regulations need to reflect intent
EV Dream Still Miles Away
Electric vehicles have remained a buzzword in India for years. But not much has moved on ground due to high upfront costs, range anxiety and charging infrastructure
Living Waters
A virus has caused us to scramble for oxygen but our chokehold on the environment is slowly strangling the very waters that breathe life into us. The virus is a timely reminder: We are merely consumers, not producers of life’s breath on this planet