We Need Technology for World Peace --Not World Destruction
Fire is technology. We can use it to warm our food and our home or to burn down our neighborhood. It's all a matter of how we choose to use - or abuse - resources.
Fire is technology. We can use it to warm our food and our home or to burn down our neighborhood. It's all a matter of how we choose to use - or abuse - resources. The Pentagon recently agreed to honor contracts with a lifetime cost of roughly $1.5 trillion for the F-35 Lighting Joint Strike Fighter program, despite numerous technical concerns, for the purpose of destroying or dominating our enemies du jour --and the planet, and our economy, alongside them. At the same time, and for a fraction of that amount, a civilian digital technology recently launched with the purpose of connecting people around the world for the sake of creating and nurturing peace: The Global Peace Map.
The Global Peace Map, powered by Unify in collaboration with many other organizations and individuals, is an embeddable platform that connects peacemakers and positive peace (unarmed, nonviolent) events around the world. The map automatically adjusts to your time zone and allows you to zoom and scroll across the planet to see all the different places in which people are calling or demonstrating for peace in our war-weary world.
This emergent technological dream has been created through contributions of intelligence and funds from many peace organizations and individuals. Anyone with Internet access is empowered to populate the map by creating a local event for the International Day of Peace, this Sept. 21, 2014. This globally crowd-sourced, unified and interactive tool for peace is unprecedented technology designed and used for good, constructive change--and expressing the growing will of civil society everywhere for peace.
The United Nations has declared the theme of this year's International Day of Peace, also the 30th anniversary of the General Assembly's declaration of the day's intention, as the "Right of Peoples to Peace." The UN has recognized that peace is a prerequisite of realizing human rights around the world, and it is within our potential as human beings to build positive peace. The Global Map is one way technology is helping us harness this potential. Social media is, as well. Participants of local events on Sept. 21, 2014 are encouraged to take pictures and share them to social media networks with the hashtag #PeaceDay. There is also a Facebook Event Page for a globally synchronized meditation with already more than 20,000 participants.
If you are reading this online, then you are engaging with some of the most complex technology in the history of the planet: the Internet. You are literally reading light as it is interpreted through complex networks and computer chips to relay ideas and feelings around the world. All of the technology in the world of humans was born from within us and is a reflection of our potential. Will we use it as the fire to keep us warm or will we let it burn down all that we cherish in this life?
Urgent. It's never been this bad.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission from the outset was simple. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed and doing some of its best and most important work, the threats we face are intensifying. Right now, with just four days to go in our Spring Campaign, we are not even halfway to our goal. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Can you make a gift right now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? There is no backup plan or rainy day fund. There is only you. —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Fire is technology. We can use it to warm our food and our home or to burn down our neighborhood. It's all a matter of how we choose to use - or abuse - resources. The Pentagon recently agreed to honor contracts with a lifetime cost of roughly $1.5 trillion for the F-35 Lighting Joint Strike Fighter program, despite numerous technical concerns, for the purpose of destroying or dominating our enemies du jour --and the planet, and our economy, alongside them. At the same time, and for a fraction of that amount, a civilian digital technology recently launched with the purpose of connecting people around the world for the sake of creating and nurturing peace: The Global Peace Map.
The Global Peace Map, powered by Unify in collaboration with many other organizations and individuals, is an embeddable platform that connects peacemakers and positive peace (unarmed, nonviolent) events around the world. The map automatically adjusts to your time zone and allows you to zoom and scroll across the planet to see all the different places in which people are calling or demonstrating for peace in our war-weary world.
This emergent technological dream has been created through contributions of intelligence and funds from many peace organizations and individuals. Anyone with Internet access is empowered to populate the map by creating a local event for the International Day of Peace, this Sept. 21, 2014. This globally crowd-sourced, unified and interactive tool for peace is unprecedented technology designed and used for good, constructive change--and expressing the growing will of civil society everywhere for peace.
The United Nations has declared the theme of this year's International Day of Peace, also the 30th anniversary of the General Assembly's declaration of the day's intention, as the "Right of Peoples to Peace." The UN has recognized that peace is a prerequisite of realizing human rights around the world, and it is within our potential as human beings to build positive peace. The Global Map is one way technology is helping us harness this potential. Social media is, as well. Participants of local events on Sept. 21, 2014 are encouraged to take pictures and share them to social media networks with the hashtag #PeaceDay. There is also a Facebook Event Page for a globally synchronized meditation with already more than 20,000 participants.
If you are reading this online, then you are engaging with some of the most complex technology in the history of the planet: the Internet. You are literally reading light as it is interpreted through complex networks and computer chips to relay ideas and feelings around the world. All of the technology in the world of humans was born from within us and is a reflection of our potential. Will we use it as the fire to keep us warm or will we let it burn down all that we cherish in this life?
Fire is technology. We can use it to warm our food and our home or to burn down our neighborhood. It's all a matter of how we choose to use - or abuse - resources. The Pentagon recently agreed to honor contracts with a lifetime cost of roughly $1.5 trillion for the F-35 Lighting Joint Strike Fighter program, despite numerous technical concerns, for the purpose of destroying or dominating our enemies du jour --and the planet, and our economy, alongside them. At the same time, and for a fraction of that amount, a civilian digital technology recently launched with the purpose of connecting people around the world for the sake of creating and nurturing peace: The Global Peace Map.
The Global Peace Map, powered by Unify in collaboration with many other organizations and individuals, is an embeddable platform that connects peacemakers and positive peace (unarmed, nonviolent) events around the world. The map automatically adjusts to your time zone and allows you to zoom and scroll across the planet to see all the different places in which people are calling or demonstrating for peace in our war-weary world.
This emergent technological dream has been created through contributions of intelligence and funds from many peace organizations and individuals. Anyone with Internet access is empowered to populate the map by creating a local event for the International Day of Peace, this Sept. 21, 2014. This globally crowd-sourced, unified and interactive tool for peace is unprecedented technology designed and used for good, constructive change--and expressing the growing will of civil society everywhere for peace.
The United Nations has declared the theme of this year's International Day of Peace, also the 30th anniversary of the General Assembly's declaration of the day's intention, as the "Right of Peoples to Peace." The UN has recognized that peace is a prerequisite of realizing human rights around the world, and it is within our potential as human beings to build positive peace. The Global Map is one way technology is helping us harness this potential. Social media is, as well. Participants of local events on Sept. 21, 2014 are encouraged to take pictures and share them to social media networks with the hashtag #PeaceDay. There is also a Facebook Event Page for a globally synchronized meditation with already more than 20,000 participants.
If you are reading this online, then you are engaging with some of the most complex technology in the history of the planet: the Internet. You are literally reading light as it is interpreted through complex networks and computer chips to relay ideas and feelings around the world. All of the technology in the world of humans was born from within us and is a reflection of our potential. Will we use it as the fire to keep us warm or will we let it burn down all that we cherish in this life?