The mighty pen-pal

"What I’d like to see is a pen pal web site designed to end war. The idea would be to connect citizens in different countries at such a high rate it would be politically impossible for the two countries to start a war.

You might support your government in a war against a country full of people you don’t know. But would you support a war that has a good chance of killing your e-mail friend Phlubanakawahaha and his entire family? There is some theoretical level of citizen-to-citizen contact that makes war between two countries virtually impossible."

Scott Adams quoted in a great post from Virtual Economics

Comments

[Ed Charvet]

Good plan, but I'm moving to Switzerland before starting to make my new overseas friends, otherwise I am going to need to write to a lot of people in a lot of different places just to cover enough ground to ensure I have all the countries we want to pick a fight with covered.

[Steve Nimmons]

Interesting idea, although I wonder how we would keep out those that would use such an opportunity for personal antagonism.

The ‘pen pal’ idea made me think about linking with Genealogy 2.0 and the possibility for suggesting pen pals based on family links across countries (could be interesting in terms of maintaining or re-establishing links between displaced communities, whether that be through immigration or a host of others).

There could also be an interesting twist with educational benefits. What sprung to mind immediately was connecting pen pals from regions that have had past conflict. WW2 education, sharing the stories of the holocaust and many others would make for very interesting projects.

[almost witty]

I think some call this the McDonalds supply-and-demand theory, on the grounds that countries that are part of the supply-and-demand chain for a major global conglomerate, could never really war against each other.

[Phlubanakawahaha]

> "Phlubanakawahaha"
"But those aliens have such riDIculous names, don't they?"

[MEKONNEN TADESSE]

It is very interesting to exchange ideas ,views and culture with people around the world. I remember I had so many pen pal fom germany and france.Really most of them were like my family. some of them came here visited my family and my country.
During this time I was able to get so many knowledge from those friends.
I never ever forget those friends.
MEKONNEN TADESSE
P.O.BOX 59255
ADDIS ABABA
ETHIOPIA
E-MAIL-mekotad@yahoo.com

[Robert Pope]

I actually have a very similar idea, I own a website design company and have made it a point to find friends in places my government is at war with. It would be neat to see a coordinated effort of 1,000,000 americans searching for penpals in a country targeted by our home government. I would love to hear your ideas on what such a site would need in order to be a success. The first obvious thing would be translation, but I would also like to see other things to talk about. For example the same news story shown by both Fox news AND Al Jezeer would be fascinating. I would like to be able to devote a lot of time to this project, but will tackle it as time and money permits. If you would like to donate to this project let me know!