Unnoticed information streams

I like to keep my eye on specialists in good news.  It is pretty clear that we, like many animals, are wired to stay alert to dangers and threats.  So, both consciously and unconsciously, formal and commercial sources of information tend to focus on what we call “bad news”: bad weather, crime, military threats, political defeats, alarming trends, etc.  It may take special diligence to be alert to good news. A couple of decades ago, the main such person I kept my eye on was Ben J. Wattenberg.  He had several books that mentioned trends and statistics that seemed upbeat and promising, at a time when population growth, water supply, food supply, and other important aspects of life seemed in jeopardy.  (Of course, they may still be.)

I only recently got a little bit familiar with Nate Silver, a statistician, and author of The Signal and the Noise.  He got a big boost in popularity with his predictions of the recent presidential election.  Somehow, I became aware of Charles Kenny.  His book “Getting Better”, is a look at worldwide trends in standards of living.  He writes,”

the evidence for any country being stuck in a technological dark age of population explosion and miserable subsistence without hope of exit is threadbare...looking at almost any measure EXCEPT income suggests ubiquitous improvement. The general picture is of rapid, historically unprecedented progress in quality of life—progress that has been faster in the developing world than in the developed. This is true for measures covering health, education, civil and political rights, access to infrastructure, and even beer production. Since 1960, global average infant mortality (to examine something more serious than beer production) has more than halved, for example.

Kenny, Charles (2011-03-01). Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding--And How We Can Improve the World Even More (Kindle Locations 204-209). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

He has many more amazing facts about worldwide and African progress in many areas.

My Kindle Touch can communicate with Facebook and Twitter.  I don’t use Facebook but I like what I have found so far on Twitter.  So, you have some guy (me) sitting in his armchair reading Charles Kenny.  The guy comes across a passage in the book that grabs his attention and he thinks that others might be interested.  He highlights the passage with his fingertip and is invited to share it on Twitter.  Twitter only accepts posts of 140 or less characters, including spaces.  But wait, Amazon, interested of course in promoting its books and discussion of them, instantly converts the passage into a short part of a web page, regardless of length, and then creates a very short link to that page.  At the same time, the guy in the armchair is invited to make a short explanatory comment.  In less than 30 seconds from the time our guy first read the passage, his comment, and a link to the passage are available on Twitter, worldwide.  

Suppose someone in Russia or China or Argentina reads the Tweet, clicks on the link and intrigued.  With a computer or a Kindle, that person could download the Kenny book and begin reading.  When the woman gives a lesson tomorrow in school or votes in her parliament or writes an editorial, who would guess the jumps from a 2010 book to the armchair to Twitter to her?  Yes, indeed.  Things are happening all over.  

One last bit: both Kenny and Jacqueline Novogratz (“The Blue Sweater”)of the Acumen Fund, trainer of volunteers interested in improving life in underdeveloped countries, stress that it is indeed technology but also IDEAS and DIGNITY that matter, not just money and income.