Aid Thoughts

Save the Children and original position

Save the Children seems to be pushing a set of values which incorporate the concept of the veil of ignorance.

See my previous discussion here. Hat tip to Roving Bandit’s twitter feed.

Tags: campaign, charity, veil of ignorance

This entry was posted on December 2, 2010, 9:29 am and is filed under Africa, Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Comments

• #1 by Lee on December 2, 2010 - 1:14 pm

  So when are you going to bite the bullet, sign away any remnants of concentration you may have had remaining, and open that twitter account huh?

• #2 by Tom on December 2, 2010 - 2:18 pm

  Gotta second Lee on this one.

• #3 by Matt on December 2, 2010 - 3:03 pm

  I think Twitter’s only saving grace is its function as an `interesting links sharing mechanism.’ I have several feeds coming into Google Reader, mainly because they provide me with interesting things to read every day.

  I think Twitter’s capacity for worthwhile conversation is extremely lacking. Even among the development blogosphere, I find that tweeting is more likely to produce flippant, simplified and inane discussions, which are incredibly difficult for a third party to follow.

  Its third function, for `keeping tabs on someone’, is rendered redundant by Facebook. Sure, you can keep track of people you aren’t friends with – but other than more inanity, anything worthwhile is washed out by the 140k limit. A travel tweet like

  “In Kenya right now, so beautiful”

  does not inspire much in me.

  So no, I’m not going anywhere near a twitter account.

• #4 by Tom on December 2, 2010 - 10:16 pm

  Point one is essentially the reason I use it, but I understand your reservations and how you have a work around. Either way, great blog.

• #5 by Matt on December 4, 2010 - 4:53 pm

  Tom – thanks – I don’t condemn others that use it I just wish there were some better alternatives.

• #6 by Brendan Rigby on December 5, 2010 - 8:27 am

  Hi Matt,

  I believe you picked up this thread from @rovingbandit’s twitter feed from our original article in response to this campaign over at whydev. Here is the link to the article, http://www.whydev.org/?p=1951. Or though we do not reference the notion of a veil of ignorance, that is perhaps one of the points we were making. Any thoughts?

  Cheers,

• #7 by Ranil Dissanayake on December 6, 2010 - 6:53 am

  I’m with Matt on this. I *hate* twitter. The only twitter feed I even occassionally visit is ‘shitmydadsays’, which manages to be funny in 140 characters, quite an achievement.

  As for links – I rely on the blogs and e-mails from friends when something really interesting comes up, and my own reading. I tried to follow links using twitter, but some twitterers insist on posting 25 links a day, and I’ve got a job – unless people exercise a bit more quality control, I’m not going to read any of it.

Comments are closed.