The assumption here is that peace between nations can somehow be resolved by just communication among private citizens and individual friendships; that conflicts are just misunderstandings or that we are too prejudiced or don't have enough sympathy. I can see how that is sometimes the case, but I don't see how that is always or even commonly the case. In many conflicts, there are very real underlying issues that need to be resolved and unless those fundamental imbalances are addressed, then there will not be peace.<p>For example, it looks like China is on a possible collision course with India and Southeast Asian nations over water rights. China's north is heavily populated, rapidly growing, and severely short of water. Tibet on the other hand is very rich in water resources that are upstream of major rivers in India, Laos, Vietnam, etc. As we speak there are gigantic projects diverting water from China's south to the north. It's likely not to be enough, and if China moves on to divert and dam rivers that cross international borders, there will likely be war.<p>This is just one example, but my guess would be that a resource-driven conflict that incites national pride on both sides will break those friendships rather than the other way around. If the fundamental reasons driving a conflict are not resolved, it's hard to see why friendships will be able to prevent war.
Being Greek, what I despise is being framed as one half of the world's 'mortal enemy pairs' that facebook is helping fix. For one thing, we haven't fought a direct war with Turkey for nearly 90 years. Having cultural animosity between two nations is one thing, being paraded as an example of 'warring tribes' on a worldwide forum is quite another. I fear this initiative crystalises stereotypes rather than helping break them down.
The funny thing about this is that Facebook leads to the exact opposite of peace among groups of people. There's massive amounts of social anxiety associated with your virtual prominence amongst your friends, even if you see them in-person on a regular basis.<p>Since I've quit using Facebook, etc I have noticed a massive improvement in the quality of my interactions with friends. They actually bother asking how I'm doing / what I'm up to, and I'm genuinely curious about their recent experiences.<p>I'm actually convinced that this global obsession with social networks could lead to more wars than peace -- the current generation of Internet trolls seem like a mere precursor of what's to come. People really take this virtual shit seriously -- doesn't that seem just the slightest bit scary, when coupled with natural youthful aggression?
1.) Was engaging and interesting at startup school? Check.<p>2.) Cool company initiative that I can respect? Check.<p>I think Zuckerberg might finally be growing into his own. :)
In other facebook news everyone in my freshman level class spends the whole lecture on facebook on their computer and is very surprising to me that the teacher doesnt ban computers from the classroom. ( When I started 2 years ago no one even pulled out computers during lectures unless they were at the back of the room. )<p>Maybe facebook is planning world peace through extended computer use.
war is created by the minority in power. not by the majority that uses facebook.<p>"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy..."
Herman Goering
Isn't it also possible that facebook could be used for the promotion of hate? An obvious and outstanding recent example was the recent quiz about whether the U.S. president should be killed. If you read about the balkans, (and more recently iraq) what is shocking is how quickly cultures with cross-ethnic/religous connections - even those as strong as intermarriage can quickly become polarized into bitter enemies. Which makes me wonder what these graphs of israel/palestine friendships will look like when tensions again escalate between these two groups. What did the india/pakistan graph look like after the Mumbai bombings?
Also, <a href="http://peace.stanford.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://peace.stanford.edu/</a> launched about 30 seconds ago. It has a list of all the other participating Peace Innovation sites.
I've never been convinced that opages like this really have much effect.<p>Also it's worth pointing out that the graphs are immaterial; the people with real animosity wont be making those connections - and Facebook don't seem to be doing anything to encourage them......
Hm... anybody can think of a reason why the adding cross country connections seems correlated for various pairs of countries.<p>For example the local max on Sep 19, or the local min at Aug 21 seem to hold for most pairs of countries.
radiolab (part of nyc's public radio) had a great news piece about this very topic. Back during the cold war like 1 in 3 people thought war was inevitable. It says a lot about our culture that 1 in 10 think that we can achieve PEACE. 66% peace lovers to 10% is pretty sad.<p>Great listen if you have an hour commute: <a href="http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/10/19/new-normal/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/10/19/new-normal/</a>
Do they actually have a "theory of peace" that they are using to design the site, or are they just posting statistics?<p>edit: Here's my take. "War is a failure of the imagination." Once you understand that quote, you've just 'gotten' about half of history.