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When a software developer learns a new programming language, s/he usually starts by writing a simple program that just makes the text "Hello, World!" appear on screen. Similarly, a brief crowd shot on the Bravo Channel coverage of the Live Earth concerts showed a homemade banner with the words "HELLO EARTH."
It was a stunt, of course--an attempt to stand out among the shots of seas of ordinary people which composed a tiny fraction of the footage that supposedly has been seen by two billion people worldwide. But the impulse behind it is worth considering: during and after this glitzy event that celebrated mostly those who are already celebrities, ordinary people from around the world want to communicate with each other. They perhaps even want to unite, to join hands in a common purpose against a threat so large in scope that it may in fact take billions to apply the pressure needed to avert it. (Consider that the combined populations of the U.S. and China, the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, are not far short of two billion.)
The concert organizers recognized this impulse, in a small way. They created a miniature contest in which sending a text message meant that you could get your name and hometown scrolled across the screen, providing a miniature "hello, world" for thousands of viewers. Among the several text messages you could send was "SHARE," which registered your commitment to text five friends and thus establish one of those expanding chain-mail networks which can theoretically encircle the world.
But what I think would be more interesting would be a random pen-pal system where you could hook up directly with a Live Earth fan in another country, learn about what drew him or her to the concerts, and swap stories and ideas about solving the climate crisis. If we could use this event to build real, active connections between people around the world, rather than simply sharing a status as passive onlookers to a global happening, I think it would be a step toward uniting all the world's anti-global-warming movements into one meta-movement, which in turn could serve as a model for a powerful form of global democracy. But then again, maybe I'm just being needlessly grandiose because it's past midnight and I'm not thinking straight.
It was a stunt, of course--an attempt to stand out among the shots of seas of ordinary people which composed a tiny fraction of the footage that supposedly has been seen by two billion people worldwide. But the impulse behind it is worth considering: during and after this glitzy event that celebrated mostly those who are already celebrities, ordinary people from around the world want to communicate with each other. They perhaps even want to unite, to join hands in a common purpose against a threat so large in scope that it may in fact take billions to apply the pressure needed to avert it. (Consider that the combined populations of the U.S. and China, the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, are not far short of two billion.)
The concert organizers recognized this impulse, in a small way. They created a miniature contest in which sending a text message meant that you could get your name and hometown scrolled across the screen, providing a miniature "hello, world" for thousands of viewers. Among the several text messages you could send was "SHARE," which registered your commitment to text five friends and thus establish one of those expanding chain-mail networks which can theoretically encircle the world.
But what I think would be more interesting would be a random pen-pal system where you could hook up directly with a Live Earth fan in another country, learn about what drew him or her to the concerts, and swap stories and ideas about solving the climate crisis. If we could use this event to build real, active connections between people around the world, rather than simply sharing a status as passive onlookers to a global happening, I think it would be a step toward uniting all the world's anti-global-warming movements into one meta-movement, which in turn could serve as a model for a powerful form of global democracy. But then again, maybe I'm just being needlessly grandiose because it's past midnight and I'm not thinking straight.
