Mumbai attack coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media

November 28th, 2008

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 11:21 am

http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=339 ZDNET

The devastation in Mumbai has been top-of-mind and top-of-the-news over the last few days – with good reason. It’s also been the hottest trending topic on Twitter and covered widely as the latest disaster to be live broadcasted via tweet.

Sadly, the people writing about how cool it is that people are live tweeting the events in Mumbai are missing a huge point. What’s happening now — and what is happening in Mumbai — is bigger than all of us. It’s bigger than communicating via Twitter. It’s bigger than just reading blogs. This is where social media grows up.

Social media is providing the ability to report and take in unfiltered news in a more direct way than ever before possible and we’re doing it on a mass scale. It’s no longer just a toy for early adopters and Internet nerds; it’s taking its place as an influencer far beyond technology. There is, however, a downside: there’s very little way to know what is true and what is rumor. As fellow ZDNet-er Michael Krigsman said to me the night, “we’re trading off potential accuracy for immediacy.”

Solar Cooking: A Different View of Enviroment & Humanity

http://www.jewishworldwatch.org/refugeerelief/solarcookerproject.html

If you have not heard about this innovation it's worth checking out.

Jewish World Watch is committed to protecting refugee women and girls from rape and other forms of violence, and helping them to rebuild their lives. Women and girls fleeing the genocide in Darfur, Sudan are placed in extreme jeopardy when undertaking the simple, but vital, task of collecting firewood for cooking fuel. We are reducing the vulnerability of these women by providing the Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps in Chad with solar cookers, and reducing their need to collect firewood. Our project protects these women and provides them with income opportunities that include: manufacturing solar cookers, training others to use the cookers and making carrying bags to increase the life span of the cookers. JWW is also developing other companion projects aimed to keep the women inside the relative safety of the camp.

When I heard about this I was moved and amazed at the simplicity and depth of this intervention/innovation.

It makes me consider how we are so disconnected to the earth and how to live, that we miss the humanism and the simple principles of our environment that can provide answers to our most vile problems.

We complicate even our most urgent needs as a society and we actually believe that basic solutions are too difficult to deal with.

My admiration to Jewish World Watch for this.

Sal

1920 U.S. Election

Eugene Debs ran for President in 1920 as a socialist while serving 10 years in prison for opposing World War I.

Debs receives one million votes. President Harding invites him to dinner.

Sal