Rethink Maslow's hierarchy of needs

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When we touch upon topics about personality, psychology, and so forth. Everybody studies Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Although there has been tons of criticisms on this theory, it can be said that this is one of the masterpieces with regard to personality studies.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow)

Taking a subject about organisational psychology,  the lecturer showed us one picture. She used the picture to make students laugh as a joke. But, for me, it's not joking. Maybe I think that many Japanese, who experienced the biggest earthquake and tsunami in 2011, can agree with me. The picture is below.

(http://boingboing.net/2014/09/03/addendum-to-the-modified-maslo.html)

When this picture came out to us, many students laughed. But, I was entirely persuaded by the picture. Let me explain why in following. I remembered two things. First one is that the Internet access can be seen as one of human rights. Second is that social networking services through the Internet access can become a lifeline in an emergency.

Looking at the first point, in May 2011, a special rapporteur submitted a report that accessibility of the Internet is one of the human rights. From the link of the report, you can see the following statement. This meansthat the broadband access should be seen as a human right. 

The Special Rapporteur underscores the unique and transformative nature of the Internet not only to enable individuals to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression, but also a range of other human rights, and to promote the progress of society as a whole. 
 

Many media has taken this news, but it seems misreadings of this report. Although they reported that UN approved the Imternet access is a human right, I think it doesn't. When you search this topic on google, this report shared above is just submitted by the special rapporteur to UN human right council. After that, many organisations not only UN but also other institutions about the Internet have seriously discussed this topic though . 


But, anyway, I personally think that we can say that the Internet access is a human right because it removes many asymmetries in terms of information. Moreover, it allow us to participate in social activity. 



Before the access to the Internet, what do we need? Yes, charing a battery. Without the battery, any electronic devices such as a tablet device, a smartphone, a laptop, are not only useless but also taking places. We all know how important the battery of these devices is. 

Moving on to second point, readers of this blog maybe know the access of the Internet with the battery can help our lives because I shared a video by Mr. James Kondo, a head of Twitter Japan, in this blog twice. Yes, let me share the video once again here since this video shows these importances of the Internet access and the battery to help us practically with an example of Twitter under the biggest earthquake and tsunami in Japan. 

In the video, he raised two questions: how to collect the critical information and how to map issues and find solutions.

On to the first question, as he mentions in his talk, many TV which is widely used to get information was broken by the biggest earthquake in 2011. So, the government, local authorities and many medias send out real time information through Twitter because SNS was available even in this emergency. 

Next, people don't know how to reach you in order to rescue you when you are in danger. It's because we don't know where you are in an emergency. 

Mr. Kondo shared one amazing story to answer the second question. A lady, who was in a damaged area and an user of Twitter, tweeted "although I rushed into a building to escape from tsunami, it's approaching. Scary. Please help me." One guy in a safe area,  who didn't follow the user, came out with an idea to integrate information about needs under the emergency.

He made a hashtag "#j_j_helpme" - Japan Jishin (earthquake) help me. And then, the other user who followed both these users above spread out her situation with using this hashtag. These following actions allowed people to call a rescue centre. Next day... yes, she who was in danger of tsunami was rescued! 

Through this example, you can realise how importance of charging a battery of your gadget which allows you to access to the Internet is. Do only people, who live in an area where the natural disaster often occur, have a sympathy with me. I hope that YOU can realise how vital these aspects are through this blog post. Thus, I reckon that it is worth adding these two facets on Maslow's hierarchy needs.