Newton's laws of motion (as described by WIKIPEDIA) are three physical laws that together laid the foundation for classical mechanics. They describe the relationship between a body and the forces acting upon it, and its motion in response to said forces. They have been expressed in several different ways over nearly three centuries,[1] and can be summarized as follows:
- First law: When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either is at rest or moves at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.[2][3]
- Second law: The acceleration of a body is directly proportional to, and in the same direction as, the net force acting on the body, and inversely proportional to its mass. Thus, F = ma, where F is the net force acting on the object, m is the mass of the object and a is the acceleration of the object.
- Third law: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to that of the first body.
I am sure you think I've digressed completely.... yes, but no.
That Newton guy he was really effin' smart when he came up with this theory. I know that I, for one, continuously see the results of his work, be it personally or professionally. Normally, I'm on the shit end of the stick when it comes to his laws... but recently, I've been seeing some pretty spectacular POSITIVE results of his laws.
My thesis falls under the first law, it has been established and I've come across some good research articles here and there to figure out what direction I might take with it. And then BAM! the second law - the project that I've been working on has taken off like a Virgin Airliner to London - which is amazing to say the least. The third law applies directly to the two previous laws (projects) colliding in mid air making for what is feeling like a firework right now.
For the project (also now dubbed the summer challenge) I am doing research and analysis on how we as facility managers use social media to interact with each other within the industry. I made a small survey to give some preliminary information. In reaction to this survey I have gotten feedback as to other places I can turn where previous research has been done on this exact topic. At this same time, at work, I also happened to be in a meeting about doing some disaster planning. One of the gentlemen at the meeting saw a book on inclusion sitting on someones desk and went into a nice professor-ly discussion about the social / generational inclusion that needs to take place these days. He of course was meaning this in the disaster sense where there is literally a huge divide between outgoing generations (baby boomers) and the XY factors. XY can't function without electricity the BB's know how to function, but in today's society dependent on technology makes it almost impossible to do - as if it's a lost art form.
As the conversation about our actual meeting (about emergency management), the subject would inadvertently come up. How did people communicate during the storm? They ended up having to figure out how to effectively use the texting on their phone as worked on a different frequency then the jammed phone system. People from "inside" the storm ravaged areas could text to people outside who could then disseminate information publicly - almost in real time, keeping the masses informed. How is this built in to a disaster plan? Is it built into one? Who knows?
The meeting continued, but then dots just started coming out to me just listening. A disaster happens, how can we mitigate it, how do we communicate it, how do we react to it, what can we do for the future to prevent the past from repeating itself...as bad?
Most all federal, state, and local funding mandates that facilities have certain emergency plans in place (emergency plans that mostly deal with how we communicate). Most all of these mandates give example "cookie cutter" plans that organizations can tailor to their needs, very rarely are they ever more than cookie cutter. These pre-conceived plans often times tend to be ill conceived because they foster very little collaboration, especially when you have a large population or umbrella organization to which you're servicing.
This leads me to my own thesis... federal state, and local building codes, zones, laws are all going to change as a result of emergency management, disaster recovery, etc etc. As a DIRECT result, all mandates will change, emergency plans will have to be adopted to reflect those changes..... .... again goes to inclusion, reactive vs reflective.
TA DAHHHHH full circle . . . . oh yes Mr. Newton ... "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." Science Kids - Science Facts
- "Plato is my friend - Aristotle is my friend - but my greatest friend is truth."
- "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
- "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
- "Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things."
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