John Lennon, one of the world's most recognised names in the history of music, always imagined a world where people lived as "one". He also beseeched the world with his wife, Yoko Ono, to "give peace a chance". They sang, "Everybody's talking about/ Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism/ This-ism, that-ism, ism ism ism/ All we are saying is give peace a chance", in an earnest attempt to spread the message of peace through music and catchy rhymes. Today, emulating the same example of an imagined peaceful world, Facebook, one of the most frequented social networking sites, has joined the peace bandwagon by being part of the Peace Dot initiative, started by Stanford University.
What is the Peace Dot initiative?
'Peace Dot', the brainchild of Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, is an attempt to bring together technology and world peace, heralding a social change. The website says, Many are pessimistic about peace, but our Stanford team sees a different trend. Today, many good things are happening. To highlight work that increases peace, we organized "Peace Dot" and invited some partners to join us. Stanford will help track the progress and share data, which it hopes will be positive.
Where does Facebook come in?
Facebook is perhaps one of the first social media sites to join the Peace Dot campaign. "Facebook is proud to play a part in promoting peace by building technology that helps people better understand each other. By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term", says the website.
How does it work?
Everyday, more and more people across the world are logging in to Facebook to connect with long lost friends, relatives and acquaintances. This is where the Peace dot campaign comes in, its inherent message being, "You are not alone". Peace Dot aims to spread the message of peace through this thriving culture of social networking.
What does it track?
The Peace Dot movement tracks the number of people connected to others across ethnicities, religion and across the continents which have a record of disputes. For example, there are about 7231 India-Pakistan connections as of the last 24 hours, which is displayed on the site. Every day, claims the site, they ask people the question, "Is world peace possible?", the answers to which are tracked region-wise. Even though the statistics say that only 8.51% people in the US think it is possible, Facebook is confident that the numbers will increase as the campaign gains momentum.
Just a few days old, this campaign is all set to connect the online world and has succeeded in adding a whole new dimension to social networking - that of world peace, the online way.
Imagine that. And give peace a chance.
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