If you know somebody with Dementia or an Autistic child with a tendency to wander, you can relate to the fear of losing them.
Power of the Crowd
The "power of the crowd" is used by companies like four square to help find the best places to eat, drink, shop, or visit, Indiegogo and Kickstarter uses it to help starts get funded, The Tile App and TrackR use it to help find lost items. Waze (a Google company) uses it to find the shortest route, Quora uses to find answers to tough questions, Uber uses it for ride share. This is what Mike Eagan means "Why the mob rules" in his article.
Crowd Power for Safety of Wanders
Now the power of crowd can be used to keep your loved ones with Dementia or your Autistic child safe. Simply have them wear a Safety button from Safety Labs. To make it easy for people to wear the button, safety buttons comes with multiple accessories; shoe clip-on, a pendant a wrist band or a key chain. Use the one which best suites the needs. The button is then wirelessly connected to a home base unit Anchor and when the person wanders away, this wireless connection breaks generating an alarm. The Safety button broadcasts a small signal which is caught by Safety Scanner app running passively in back ground on an smart phone sending the GPS location of the lost person.
The two kinds of crowdsourcing
As mentioned by Mike in his article, there are two basic kinds of crowdsourcing -- the kind where people consciously participate, and the kind where they don't. Safety Labs uses both, where people once have downloaded the app do not need to participate consciously, thus doing their good dead of the day without consciously participating.
Where can I get more Information
You tube explainer video provides more information.