Technology, Social Justice, and Making Things Better

UPDATE: CROP Walk web donations are closed but you can designate gifts (or make general donations) via the DonateNow or JustGive buttons on the RUMC home page.

First, go to the Ramona United Methodist Church CROP Hunger Walk page. Donate a few dollars. A half dozen of the folks with whom I go to church and I are participating in this event; with a few mouse clicks so can you. You’ll get more satisfaction than from anything else you could do on the Internet right now.

Second, if you’re interested in how technology like that page might help make things better for more people, go to the Texas Review of Law and Politics (TROLP) table of contents for the most recent issue and read the third article, entitled, “Set the Default to Open: Plessy’s Meaning in the Twenty-First Century and How Technology Puts the Individual Back at the Center of Life, Liberty, and Government.”

The contrast in language between the CROP Walk site to promote social justice and the law review article is manifest: the former says it, “works with partners to eradicate hunger and poverty and to promote peace and justice around the world.” The latter celebrates “[r]ugged individualism” and technology to make capital markets — under attack now more than ever as creating injustice — more efficient. One thing to consider as you contemplate such matters: XBRL, the technology standard that is revolutionizing global finance, works with microfinance and is being promoted to support disclosure related to sustainable development.

Can technology help reconcile rugged individualism and social justice? It’s been a long time since the U.S. has had a genuine political realignment. In the era of Internet government, one wonders if the very concept of political realignment survives. But there’s an easy way to recover from the exertion of thinking seriously about such matters. Go back to the Ramona United Methodist Church CROP Hunger Walk page and donate again.