Digital Literacies and 911

*This post is about something that was pretty scary, and the ending isn't necessarily happy. I'm not graphic about it, but I wanted to give people a heads up.

Last night, I was leaving a meeting, looking at the train schedules on my phone. One of my friends shouted, "Bethany! Call 911." I heard a gasp and looked up. A woman had fallen on the ground, and she was having a seizure.

I called 911. We were on a busy street, and it was hard to hear the operator. Was the victim conscious? No. Was the victim breathing? Yes. Was the victim garble-garble? What? Was the victim garble-garble? I can't hear you! Keep the victim garble-garble. Don't garble-garble. I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

The operator hung up.

I stared at my phone. The operator had hung up. Brain didn't compute. Hurt person on ground. Help person. Cover person. Comfort person. Where ambulance?

I looked up. There was a huge crowd of people, and every single one of them was calling 911.

The ambulance came a few moments later, and the paramedics took over.

How does this incident speak to digital literacies? There's an article I really like, Vasudevan (2010), that considers the affordances of portable technologies like  MP3 players, handheld video game players, and cell phones in relationship to literacy. Vasudevan writes, ". . .the value of these technologies is underrepresented in studies focusing on the intersections of literacies and technologies in the lives of youth who . . . are perceived to be on the margins of educational discourses" (p. 67).

For me, in an emergency, instinct takes over. I called 911 because someone told me to, not because I was actively engaging in digital literacy. Looking at the way the group operated, though, I see connections between digital literacies and the emergency.

Apparently, in Philly, there's a belief that ambulances take a long time, and sometimes they don't come. I can't say if that's true or not. What I know is, the people in the group believed it, and I heard a lot of comments like: "They come when a lot of people call," "The call dropped? Call them back," and, "Do you have a phone? You call 911, too." What I saw from that group of people in relation to portable technologies was an accessing of a shared belief (that 911 calls are more effective when multiple), a feeling of agency (that their phone calls would affect the speed of the response), human contact (working together to execute a plan), and digital literacy (in the sense that responders were using technologies to communicate rather than in the sense that they were using technologies to communicate through symbols like writing . . . that's an entire paper, though, so I'm not going to go into it).

I know that there are both problems and affordances related to cell phones, but last night I was really glad that we all had phones.

I hope that the woman who had the seizure is okay.

(PS I have a feeling that multiple calls to 911 could clog up the system, and I'm sure that some people will question that the group acted together to make multiple calls. I want to emphasize that the woman was in critical condition, the first call to 911 resulted in a hang-up, and an ambulance - with lights on - drove past while we were trying to get help)

Reference:
Vasudevan, L. (2010). Education remix: New media, literacies, and the emerging digital geographies. Digital Culture & Education. 2:1, 62-82