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Monday, January 01, 2007

Online Altruism

My first act of the new year was to give money to a woman in Azerbaijan. She's starting a business and needs investment.

I did it via a website that makes this sort of thing easy -- a matter of seconds.

Wish I could say I thought of it myself, but it was a Christmas gift from my niece Giulia's new husband, Andrew Ferre. He gives the money in your name, and you activate the account and choose a worthy entrepreneur.

I mention it because The World Question, which asks a bunch of scientists at the beginning of each year what they're optimistic about, includes this, from Dan Sperber:


I am optimistic about the development of both individual and collective forms of altruism on the Web. Moreover, I believe that what we see on the Web has more diffuse counterparts in society at large. The Web is a network of networks where, at every individual node, many communities overlap, and where local allegiances have at best a weak hold. The World Wide Web is the most dynamic and visible manifestation, and a driving force of a world that is itself becoming one wide web. In this world, more and more altruistic acts—acts that had in ancestral times been aimed just at one's kin, and later extended to tribe, sect, or country—may now, out of sensible sense of common destiny, be intended for the benefit of all.