U-Haul, QuestionBox, and Democratizing Information

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-07-06 14:09:00 UTC
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A few nights ago, I saw every U-Haul in the San Francisco Bay Area.

After the 1800 some odd mile trip from Chicago, my friends and I were desperate to unload the 6x12 trailer that had carried our lives that distance. It was not just a matter of convenience: there was literally no place to park a vehicle with a trailer that size on the street.

After no less than three U-Haul places had no facilities for night storage, we began to get frustrated. The 24 hour U-Haul helpline had no information about which areas had night drop off. After hours of driving around, we finally gave up and luckily, found a dog park to park next to.

Night drop-off is one of the best features of U-Haul. Moving invariably takes longer than it seems like it should, and the night drop-off is a great system for keeping the rental service flexible.

Worse than the fact that no place in the Bay had night drop off however was that there was no information that could confirm or deny that. The very nice people on the U-haul help line had no idea where there was night drop off, but were pretty sure there must be somewhere that had it. That sort of lack of information is almost more maddening than the lack of the service itself.

But it's also a good reminder about just how poor the feedback loops in nonprofit work tend to be, and how much of the world lives without the sort of omniscient access to information that smart phones and Google provide us. While much of that information is superfluous, some of it is essential.

I think that's why I'm so excited about projects that open access to information, such as QuestionBox, a service which allows people in rural villages to call an operator who then uses the internet to help that caller find specific pieces of information they're looking for. It's simple, but I can see many applications where it could provide vital information for a segment of the population that would be otherwise more or less totally overlooked by modern telecommunications.

What other services like QuestionBox exist out there to help ensure that information is accessible even to the poorest of the poor?

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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