Then, the followers of skepticism – Hume, rationalism – Descartes, empiricism – Locke, were less prepared to believe in simple truths. Modern thinkers grew increasingly tired of philosophy instead pursuing a strict scientific realism in schools of pragmatism, positivism, and materialism.

Whether looking for answers in religious belief or by seeking for rational explanations trough observation, humans have always been thriving to learn more about what’s out there.

Fictional ideas exist in a paradigm of conceptual fantasy; on the scale of possibility they have no requirement for being probable being only limited by one’s imagination. While there are philosophers such as Nancy Cartwright who argue for the existence of a degree of fictionalism in the scientific discourse (Votsis, 2004, p. 16), science aspires to create models which follow reality as closely as possible.

Science is not characterized by personal values and partiality, but rather by a certain academic disinterest. Owning to this culture of rigor, scientific ideas are tiny subset of all the creative thought generated worldwide; it is a specific form knowledge, dealing with the phenomena of the world in a systematic and structured way.

While the subject of scientific research can be anything that can be observed by the scientist, the academic world of science is organized into fields of study. There are the scientists who research biological, physical and chemical phenomena and those who investigate anthropological, social, and cultural subjects; but this is not a complete list. There are many overlaps in the structure of the academic world, and often the same phenomenon is studied from differing points of view.

Whatever the scientific field, the practice of science (what is it that the scientists actually do?) is best considered in the light of the scientific method. Although there are famous disagreements in the precise nature of these methods (such as Kuhn’s cautious attitudes towards induction in recognition of its fallacies), there are also common techniques of modern science.

The principles of formal mathematical logic and the categorization of independent and dependent variables in the deduction of cause and effect, and the requirement that each part of the scientific method should be falsifiable are just some of which practitioners deem almost universally essential.

The findings of science are shared in scientific papers, which, as science in general, need to be well structured and clearly organized. As such they are most often published in peer reviewed journals for the audience of the particular academic field.

More generalized publications, for example the journal Science also publish research from a wider range of fields. Students enrolled in university level courses are required to format their research in specific rigorous ways. Among the most common are the American APA and MLA styles for which the undergraduate and graduate lever professors are the primary audience.

This culture of publication plays a key role in the dissemination of science by allowing for reproduction and verification of results by repeating the experiments in question.

Thus the discussion of the structure of science and the nature of its methods of research demonstrates that science is cyclical by nature. Trough repeating patterns of research and investigation science is advanced, innovation and new technologies progressed. If something is not true, it can be demonstrated by a test. The scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, and the formation of theories are the methods used in the scientific pursuit for truth; they are a part of the culture of critical thinking are the basis for the creation of knowledge.

Works Cited

Votsis, I. (2004). The Epistemological Status of Scientific Theories: An Investigation of the Structural Realist Account. London: London School of Economics.

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Two hundred and one years have passed since the trade in slaves was abolished in the British Empire with those dealing in slaves subjected to a fine of one hundred pounds (Parliament of the United Kingdom, 1807). Sixty years ago this December the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations expressed in plain words the fundamental and inalienable rights held by every human being around the planet; universal in each nation and in each culture it made freedom from slavery a fundamental human right. Three years ago at the 2005 World Summit the Assembly introduced a new concept of a moral imperative (known as the Responsibility to Protect) for countries to protect their own people from exploitation, and to help those in need in fellow countries (United Nations General Assembly, 2005).

These events in history pretend to show a lineage in time of extending freedoms, with the sovereign states consenting to protect the freedoms of every man, woman and child. But perhaps these are just words substituting for realities, empty declarations with little meaning if one looks at the statistics of contemporary slavery.

Forced labor and unfree labor together with slavery are the words one will find in many reports concerning work and labor around the world. Even though constituting a smaller percentage of the overall population of the planet, the total number of people in slavery today may be at least as large as it was in the heyday of slavery over two hundred years ago. According to global research there are at least 12.3 million people in forced labor (International Labor Office, 2005, p. 17). An expert on forced labor Steven Bales gives a larger number, estimating there are 27 million in forced labor around the world (Bales, 2004, p. 8), 15 million of them children (Bales, 2004, p. 237) yet marking these are conservative figures. There are other estimates show numbers which are even larger but sometimes also take into account aside from forced labor the collateral damage of extreme economic situations such as extreme poverty, war and hunger (Anti-Slavery Project, 2007). There remains little doubt that by any estimate and however strictly defined, slavery is a contemporary problem.

Consequently, it would be profitable for many to look at how this suffering could be ended.

Not a new idea, the philosophy of a Social Contract is not only the basis for government as defined by the Princeton University Dictionary – “an implicit agreement among people that results in the organization of society; individual surrenders liberty in return for protection” – but also a basis for democracy, constitution, and the acceptance and respect for others. Just as in the seventeenth century at the time of Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes, the intellectual fathers of the social contract, slavery, in its roots is a problem of the lack of respect for the rights of others.

Of all the victims of slavery, today children are the part of most concern, as they are currently the part of demographics most susceptible to psychological and physical terror from forced labor. One must consider that children who remain captive in places which have little or no access to education, media, the Internet or any other type of information modern man takes for granted, remain ignorant of the fruits of culture, science, arts, and etcetera. If these children are subjected to violence and are not allowed to leave their workplace, and are deprived of meals, or fed only enough to keep them alive, one must also consider the profound physiological effects in addition to the psychological damage. Perhaps most descriptive thought is the thought that if these children spend all their day working, they have no opportunity to play as children. Thus, if the reasoning in the preceding paragraph is fair, the obvious conclusions drawn must be that the abolition of slavery and the building of freedom can only begin with inspiring respect for others in children; that is to say the greatest tool of freedom and the Social Contract is education.

Often the inferiority complex caused by systematic debasement and belittlement of the human nature as a slave can be enough to keep the slave in harness – it may create a certain mentality of hopelessness and submission. But if children understand they have certain inalienable rights, they can have the will and opportunity to stand up for themselves. In other words, belief in freedom is the beginning of creativity and vision – it is in the root of motivation and the possibility of self-fulfillment. Children who have an understanding that they can do better than their parents believe change is possible in the duration of their own lives and themselves become more easily the agents of change; but to engender this spirit of freedom, there must be trust in the society.

As adults such children will have more confidence and a sense of respect towards their environment and fellow man; they will not silently accept forced labor as a necessity of the economy. The belief in progress and a positive look towards the future are the values in the belief in freedom and encourage children to develop the courage to work for their own goals and dreams. Unlike those who fall in submission to forced underage unskilled labor, children with a belief in freedom will have a real chance to contribute to their own live and to the society.

Concerning adults and the phenomenon of public acceptance of forced labor, it must be said that no exploitation of the gravity and magnitude of slavery can be viable without public support. Whether in the form of a silent and passive non-participatory support because of lack of caring, or by the action of doing nothing to protect the children because of fear repercussions from the perpetrators of the crime – there must be public will. The question raised here is the following: what is the rationale for supporting slavery? Does one hold an illusion that forced labor is a reality that has to be accepted for some or other reasons that override common morality? Or as the English poet William Cowper living on eighteenth century Madeira put it

I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,

for how could we do without sugar and rum?

Perhaps as in history two hundred years ago, these six and seven year olds can be enslaved and exploited because the public at large looks away from the actions of perpetrators. In poor areas selling children to forced labor may be seen as an unfortunate economic necessity; even if regarded as an ugly and perhaps undesirable problem, one may convince oneself it is a necessary evil resulting from one’s regrettable situation. Again it is the way of thinking without respect for the wellbeing of others that encourages one to forget one’s humanity and believe this is the only way to make ends meet.

While it may be argued that is natural that many people would have their own interests before those of the other, and that this can lead to the acceptance of forced labor as a necessity in certain situations, freedom is still considered by many people a commodity to be held in high regard – something desirable for all people of every age, sex, religion, race, nationality, ethnicity or other group affiliation or categorization. Moreover, non-democratic states, criminals, and those who do not respect the laws agreed upon by the society, are in general looked down upon. States are not pleased if organizations such as Human Rights Watch release a negative review of the country’s situation and by that smudge its human rights record. It is part of each state’s illusion of the self that they are just and good; and such an illusion must be retained.

In other words, few totalitarian governments see themselves as aggressors and criminals but rather their self image is that of the guardian of some ideology or fighter for some ideal. Even if this ideology is cynical and perhaps based purely on economic self interest, it would be difficult psychologically for one to live with oneself without justifying one’s actions  trough a narrative where one is on the side of the just and good. Just as the child who must break free from the mentality of enslavement, so must the state break free from the ideologies of cynicism, hypocrisy and deceit and accept a positive view of freedom and cooperation of the society.

The belief in freedom is most prominent in societies where individuals feel responsible for their actions. Accountability and respect for fellow citizens are important in any civilized and safe community but safe communities cannot be created where the lack of education, unemployment and poverty threaten the rights of the people. Rights cannot exist without rules – agreed upon by the society and written down in laws that specify what is allowed and what is not allowed, or as put by David Hume, “liberty is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must be acknowledged to its very existence” (Hume, 1854, p. 38). Thus freedom has a fundamental role in society; it is in many a sense the basis for the existence of law, because freedom always involves choice.

The fundamental idea of an agreement between people, the Social Contract where each carries the responsibility for respect and the government creates social order or as articulated by Rousseau “a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force of the person and the good of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before” (Rousseau, 2003, p. 9) is the foundation in the protection of freedom and abolition of slavery. That is to say the creation of a social contract is in the interest of each and every one; the personal freedom achievable for any person by agreeing to be part of society is greater than that possible by refraining from the society. If one would refrain from the social contract, one would only achieve the freedoms one would be capable of attaining by force or cunning. In that sense, when one accepts the society and upholds the responsibilities of a social contract, the state becomes the arbiter for disharmonies that arise in the society. And thus modern man is incapable of existing without depending on the state to protect one’s rights. The state constitutes a framework in which maximum freedom is created for the maximum number of people. Therefore it is the weakening of the social contract that creates slavery and unfreedom. Where one disregards one’s responsibilities towards the state, one undermines one’s own safety.

In modern societies that are increasingly interconnected and globalized every person is more connected to everyone else than ever before. One can see on television how the children in the slums of Brazil prefer buying access to a computer to spending the same money on food.  Social networking sites are connecting people in ways not imaginable before the rise of the Internet. The current population social networks numbers in hundreds of millions, the largest would be the eleventh country in size (Zuckerberg, 2008).

Because of the profound importance of the Internet in the contemporary world one must consider its impact on freedom. Both the United Nations and the European Union have pressed for the right to Internet to become a human right. The 2005 UNESCO conference on Internet, Human Rights and Culture made recommendations and released a position paper on making Internet access a human right (UNESCO, 2005). The European Union has protected European citizens in individual cases from the removal of Internet access stating that “the Internet is a vast platform for cultural expression, access to knowledge, and democratic participation in European creativity, bringing generations together through the information society” (European Parliament, 2008) and calls on the Member States “to avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of Internet access” (European Parliament, 2008). Thus while Internet access has so far not been enshrined in law or in an updated declaration of human rights, there is widespread recognition in the International community of the profound importance of the Internet in the protection freedom.

Consequently, the way out of enslavement is trust and technology. Two hundred years ago Europeans enslaved many thousands in pursuit of profit; today forced labor and slavery are largely pushed out of Europe. But slaves still number in millions in other parts of the world and Europeans would be hard pressed to argue they have no part in this – one can see the suffering on the television screens in one’s living room, on screens of one’s computer and mobile phone. History does not give the ones with power the license to go through with any sort of atrocities because in the past worse has already been done. Trough the power of communication technology, the Internet and the Media, it is no longer so hard to explain why people should be granted freedom; the former narratives that allowed for slavery such as national or racial supremacy are being broken down. Technology is the source freedom and democratic power. The ideas of the Social Contract today have stronger platform on the Internet than ever before, transcending political divisions and embracing the whole of humanity in all of its diversity.

Works Cited

Anti-Slavery Project. (2007). Global Estimates of Slavery. Sidney: University of Technology Sydney.

Bales, K. (2004). Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

European Parliament. (2008, October 04). Cultural industries in Europe. Retrieved December 27, 2008, from European Parliament: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5498632

Hume, D. (1854). The Philosophical Works of David Hume. London: Little & Brown.

International Labor Office. (2005). A Global Alliance. Geneva: International Labour Organization.

Parliament of the United Kingdom. (1807). An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. London: Georg Eyre & Andrew Strahan.

Rousseau, J.-J. (2003). On the Social Contract. New York City: Courier Dover Publications.

Zuckerberg, M. (2008, August 26). Our First 100 Million. Retrieved December 25, 2008, from Facebook: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=28111272130

UNESCO. (2005). Conference on Internet, Human Rights and Culture. Recommendations (p. 2). Oegstgeest: UNESCO.

United Nations General Assembly. (2005). 2005 World Summit Outcome. 2005 World Summit Outcome (p. 31). New York City: United Nations.

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However there are more optimistic alternative models (Goh & Foo, 2007, p. 137) with implications towards better quality information and an increasingly meaningful discourse accessible to more and more people.

These views could be broadly described as being in the realm of social media, and generally advocate using technical innovations such as the Internet to engage people in a more transparent conversation. As a superior model of communication, social media will increase mediation quality and lead to benefits in several areas over the traditional broadcasting model.

Failures of the Broadcast Media

Concerns about the media, and media criticism is not new in the literature. As early as 1920, Lippmann, writing about the powers and failures of the press in his book Liberty and the News, delivered the notion that “the news columns are common carriers. When those who control them [...] determine by their own consciences what shall be reported and for what purpose, democracy is unworkable. Public opinion is blockaded” (pp. 5-6). More recently, Baudrillard, one of the most fervent media critics of the century, with more eloquence described the prevalent media model as “speech without response” (1981, p. 172).

Contemporary media cannot be viewed separately from technology; to a great degree it is and has been dependent on technological advances. Because broadcasting media models by the nature of their technology are dependent on some form of one-to-many or few-to-many communication, Baudrillard is right to criticize the media on the grounds that “they fabricate noncommunication” (p. 210) as this is indeed a technical given. However, when working with MacLean, in his later works in 1985, Baudrillard further expanded his critique on the lack of conversation in which he perhaps better described the downfalls of the contemporary media by stating that the “present architecture of the media is founded on this […] definition: they are what finally forbids response, what renders impossible any process of exchange” (1985, p. 577). This lack of possibility for conversation is why the broadcast model is obsolete.

Social media models on the other hand are less determined and allow for more flexibility. In 2008, for the most part they include highly technological implementations of mediation on the Internet platform with considerable participatory aspects. These are sites on the Internet where essentially every person becomes the media. The discussion over broadcast media seems to follow from the types of questions Baudrillard poses “what else do the media dream of besides creating the event simply by their presence?” (1994, p. 38), in which the media are seen as something large and unusual that by the sole virtue of its presents creates illusions that fool the public. The discussion in the realm of social media however, is more progressive. In essence, where everyone becomes the media, being mediated is very commonplace for each person, and the effects of being mediated could be anticipated to be less pronounced.

While according to some authors, for example Rheingold, the contemporary institutions of the “mass media [...] have “commoditized” the public sphere, substituting slick public relations for genuine debate” (2000, p. 29), social media implementations can be expected to have intrinsically a greater degree of transparency. Because they are created by the people their existence depends on people actively participating. Effectively, the social media version of the public sphere is controlled by the people to a much greater degree, than the broadcasting version of the sphere. Therefore the scope for access anywhere and for anyone for any need across devices and platforms, and even independent of location, is that much greater for social media than for broadcasting media.

The virtue of giving more power to the people is why from a political perspective social media is more democratic. Following from the premise that media set the political agenda, more accurate information, transparency and participation in this process of every conversation benefits everyone. Moreover, from a psychological viewpoint, research suggests that it is more natural for people to discuss information socially on the Internet, rather than to passively consume media created by broadcasters; according to a recent Morgan Stanley report more than half of the top 10 Internet sites by usage are social, and the usage of television is declining (Morgan Stanley, 2008, pp. 8-12).

Broadcast or Socialize?

Some of the benefits of social media are self-evident. One recent example was the Chinese earthquake in the Sichuan province on May 12, 2008. The news was broken not on mainstream media but reportedly (Bradshaw) by local Chinese in the earthquake zone, on Twitter1, a social networking site that lets people post short messages. In the Twitter realm everyone is a broadcaster. Because the social nature of Twitter and with the help of machine translation, the news reached people around the world before global broadcast media was able to take up the story, and much before Estonian broadcast media was able to copy the story from the global media.

By referring to such examples (as there have been other similar cases that have taken place around the world), one can think of the social media model as a combination of media and social relations. Because news creators are accessible through email, chat applications, and their social networking profiles, it becomes easier to ask any questions and get instant feedback. While this was possible in newspapers trough mail-in letters, the barriers of entry are greatly reduced trough the speed of communication, and high visibility of the news creator. People can interact directly with the news broadcaster on the ground trough services such as Skype and Facebook2; the latter also provides a profile for the person so what one is saying can be qualified against previous experience and commentary.

Social media is possible because the communication platform used – the Internet – is technologically superior to broadcasting in the area of communication. But furthermore, in the areas of media economy, while the broadcast media economics rely on imprecise evaluations to provide the audience numbers to the advertisers, social media implementations can make use of their high technological base and the virtues of the Internet to produce detailed and accurate information for the use of the advertisers. The nature of the conversation and actions of the participants allow advertisers to offer their goods and services at the right time, and take into account personal preferences. This degree of precision creates trust for the advertisers to place more money into the media. Moreover, as the Twitter example illustrates, the bulk of the job of producing journalism can be done by usual people, cutting down on production costs.

In addition to economical benefits, the speedy and precise analysis of media content made possible by computer technology can be utilized for other benefits as important, but perhaps less apparent at the first glance. Having precise statistics helps people visualize their communication streams, and as a part of those information streams news can be increasingly accurate. To take one example, the News Station3 website which is a trend leader in the social media space in Estonia produces streams of analytical data for each news item it indexes from broadcast news providers as well as independent producers such as blogs. The site provides statistics about many measurable aspects of news such as locations, organizations and people mentioned in the news content, and their popularity in media.

As in News Station, other websites in the social media realm will be able to analyze the media and produce story timelines which provide a live visualization of how the story is being created. For example, one could see a press release being released, the coverage being written by a certain person at Postimees, and the coverage being written by a certain person at Äripäev, charted in order of appearance; one could contact those people. One could see live the other stories being spawned in response, as well as opinions being created in the blogosphere.

There are clear benefits to such and open approach. Clear visibility of connections between newsmakers, news creators, and other players in the story would make it increasingly difficult for partial interests and public relations to control the environment and pass constructed news. Clearly identified personalities would increase public recognition of newsmakers. Easy access to newsmakers’ personal opinion in media such as blogs, and other news involving that person, and commentary would allow people to understand “the story behind the story”.

Furthermore, clearly identified locations would emphasize the aspects particular to the place of the news, while still retaining global availability. While News Station is already providing geographic visualizations, taking this technology to mainstream would create emotional connections and involve people in the news to a higher degree than plain text publications. One would understand how specific regions in the country are covered. For example, the statistics of whether news stories conglomerate more often around bigger center such as Tallinn and Tartu, and to what extent smaller places are covered – would become clearly visible. Combined with location aware devices such as the iPhone, social media would allow people to access news relevant to their location. Whether this is information about a traffic jam on the next intersection or a notice of the party that will take place in the club one is driving past, will depend on one’s personal preferences.

By using all these technologies in an open manner, social media can in effect provide the type of information that used to be the domain of government or media statistics bureaus. Combined with speed and ease of access, social media at the disposal of every consumer at every moment to make decision about the content of their communications might have considerable impacts. By that token, it is the ability of media to create open spaces for people to discuss, and the ability to provide the tools for discussion, that qualify the quality of media in the social media realm.

Such open spaces for conversation and computer technologies help people to increase the quality of the media they themselves produce and consume. People put news into context by tagging the information with keywords and by such actions make that piece of information more complete for other people. Moreover, to an extent at the current state of development, but increasingly in the future, the technique allows computers to have a better programmatic understanding of the content. The ideas of the Semantic Web (W3) that tie in with the social media model explore how information in these open spaces can be queried and mashed up in different complex ways to produce added value .

For example, emerging Silicon Valley technology startups such as Freebase and Powerset4 use a combination of social participation by the people and computer algorithms to allow users to ask complex questions the like of “What were the names of Karl Marx’s children?” and allow the user to get a clear listing with names “Laura Marx, Eleanor Marx, Jenny Longuet” (Powerset) and pictures. Powerset can be accessed over an iPhone, which in essence makes the information portable.

Because of the idea of information portability the social media model has no prerequisites for prominent television channels such as the BBC or prominent newspapers such as the New York Times to be the premiere destination because they have the means to broadcast content; on the contrary, conversation can take place across different channels independent of their size and wealth. In simple terms this means that conversation is not restricted to Postimees, Äripäev, TV3, or any other channel; the comments one makes at Postimees become accessible trough Äripäev, TV3, and vice versa. The conversation does not necessarily have to be fragmented and discontinuous with each camp claiming its territory.

Conclusions

Today people around the world are increasingly likely to be actively participating in the conversation on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter; instead of passively consuming the news. In 2008, Facebook passed the 100 million user mark (Morgan Stanley, p. 10); if it were a country, it would be the 12th by population size. Trough sites like these, and trough social media in general people become part of the conversation because they are not secluded; the conversation is portable and accessible by everyone and everywhere. “The ability of anyone to make the news will give new voice to people who’ve felt voiceless—and whose words we need to hear. They are showing all of us—citizen, journalist, newsmaker—new ways of talking, of learning” (Gillmor, p. 12).

Social media technologies create possibilities for increased public understanding what is happening in their societies. Around the world services such as Twitter allow faster communication of news content and commentary. Some institutions have taken note of these possibilities; the UK government uses Twitter to have a conversation with citizens. In Estonia, the News Station website is revolutionizing how media can be contextualized and analyzed. And the Estonian Foreign Ministry uses Second Life to communicate with its virtual tenants. In all examples social media models bring benefits over their broadcast counterparts, and the expectation is that they increase media literacy by providing a better understanding of the connections between players on the media landscape.

While the ideas around social media models may be immature and in development, they are actively being experimented with, and as the various services mentioned demonstrate, there are several measurable qualitative benefits that the social media model brings to the forefront of the discussion. While there may be criticisms, one can remember what the media visionary Marshall McLuhan once said “the student of media soon comes to expect the new media of any period whatever to be classed as pseudo by those who have acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they may happen to be” (McLuhan, p. 216)

Works Cited

Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

Baudrillard, J., & Levin, C. (1981). For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. New York: Telos Press Publishing.

Baudrillard, J., & Maclean, M. (1985). The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media. New Literary History , 577-589.

Bradshaw, P. (n.d.). OJB. Retrieved June 12, 2008, from http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/05/12/twitter-and-the-chinese-earthquake/

Bromley, M. (2001). No News is Bad News: Radio, Television, and the Public. New York: Pearson Education.

Gillmor, D. (2004). We The Media. New York: O’Reilly .

Goh, D., & Foo, S. (2007). Social Information Retrieval Systems: Emerging Technologies and Applications.Philadelphia: Idea Group Inc.

Lipmann, W. (2007). Liberty and the News. New York: Princeton University Press.

McLuhan, M. (2001). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Routledge Press.

Morgan Stanley. (2008). Internet Trends. New York: Morgan Stanley.

Powerset. (n.d.). Retrieved June 13, 2008, from http://www.powerset.com/explore/go/What-were-the-names-of-Karl-Marx’s-children%3F

Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community. Cambridge: MIT Press.

W3. (2008, June 10). W3C Semantic Web Activity. Retrieved June 14, 2008, from http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

1 For a further explanation of the Twitter service, please see twitter.com

2 For an explanation of Skype, see about.skype.com, for Facebook, please go to facebook.com

3 Please see news.station.ee for further information, available in Estonian only

4 For an explanation about services provided by Freebase and Powerset, see freebase.com/helpand powerset.com/about respectively

This article was first published on June 14, 2008 for English Composition Class at Baltic Film & Media, as an undergraduate student.

This list does not pretend for any scientific method. I’ve merely hand-picked the categories into which people have put their causes on Facebook using the Causes application.

Facebook: if you can provide any further statistics, this would be helpful.

Environmental Concerns

Pollution of air, lack of clean water, and soil erosion. Depletion of natural resources such as water and oil. Decreasing quality of air. Garbage and plastic bags. Stop Climate Change. Supports causes for Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, Carbon Capture, Geothermal, and Wave power.

Social Concerns

Population Growth. Increasing hunger. Increasing poverty.

Freedom

Internet. Net neutrality. Freedom of speech. Corruption. Freedom of the press

Conflict

Nuclear prolification. Fear. War. Dislocation.

Human Rights Wish List

Equality. Minority rights. Gay rights. Abolish death penalty. Racism. Genocide prevention.

Animal and Plant life

Animal Rights / Stop Animal Cruelty. Animal Testing. Cosmetic testing. Animal welfare. Use of fur. Bull fights. Whaling. Bush meat.  Diversity of Species. Endangered species. Extinsion of species. Dendrolagus matschiei. Protect wildlife. Rewildering projects.

Specific animals in Danger

Jangse river dolphin. Gorillas. Sharks. Sea Shells. Chinchillas. Philipine Eagle. Coral Reefs. Biomes.

Domestic Violence

Child abuse. Abuse of women. Domestic violence. Child pornography. Gun and knife crime. Sexual violence. Human trafficking. Child labor.

Statue of Liberty. Photo by Toivo Annus

I like that the statute is made of glass and looks kind of transparent. There’s free wireless Internet for everybody. And kids can skate, ride and bike, and just hang around. Pretty cool.

Bicing public bikes in Barcelona. Photo by Gill Rickson

A CouchSurfer in Barcelona showed me how I can rent a bicycle from any of the 400 station spread around the city. He pays a monthly fee of 30 Euros for the privilege.

The system is smart.. Broken bicycles are detected (those taken out, and immediately returned). The locals love it. It is easy to use, and probably the simplest way to get around the city. Barcelona has Bicing, the public bicycle transport system. Paris has Velib. So what is Tallinn doing?