(Ir)religiosity

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Social media is changing things.  You could even say social media is changing everything and it would probably be true.  I’m about halfway through Tom Friedman’s book The World is Flat right now.  Though it was originally published only three years ago, it’s already becoming a little dated as far as the half-life of web 2.0 related things these days goes — which demonstrates perfectly exactly how things are changing.

Friedman’s overall thesis is that the world is becoming increasingly “flat” as we continue to explore what appears to be the endless limits of the information age.  Anyone who has access to a computer can search for and locate just about anything they want which undermines our traditional, hierarchical systems of transmitting information.  Things are becoming more and more open and less restricted.

I ran across this site yesterday (via Andrew Sullivan)  that illustrates this point perfectly.  It is basically a simple mash-up of Google Maps and the all the Prop 8 donors.  So you can actually see where in California, or the United States, individuals or groups that contributed to the pro-Prop 8 effort.  But that’s not all.  You can actually see their names and the exact amount they gave.

This presents all sorts of new possibilities (or problems depending on how you see it).  Now, to be fair, all this information can be accessed elsewhere and has been made public by the state of California; donors were presumably aware of this when then gave.  EightMaps simply makes it all more visual and accessible.

This is fascinating.  We normally think of “donating” to something as primarily a private action.  That isn’t really true, but that’s how we think about it.

This portrayal undermines that assumption.  It makes things very public.  I’m sure many people don’t like that.  But I don’t think it’s such a bad idea.

I wonder how, if at all,  our private actions might change if we assumed that everything was public. That’s not a false assumption by the way.  Our so-called private decision to “donate” to a certain cause may have very public consequences for someone else.

Just ask the gay population in California.

What would happen if we were actually walking advertisements for the causes/ballot measures/you-fill-in-the-blank that we fervently supported in private?

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• Map of Prop 8 Donors