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Can web 2.0 really save the world?

What do you get when you put an assortment of web 2.0 developers in a room with a sprinkle of do-gooders with an idea? The Social Innovation Camp is interested in how this formula could be used to create better solutions to social problems in the real world. The 2008 Social Innovation Camp is an event being held in London this April and is being marketed as a unconference to target developers and idea-generators. Currently they are accepting submissions of ideas on their website and will be selecting the ideas that will be worked on during the camp weekend. From the looks of it, the ideas are not exactly pouring in and have a lot less to do with the greater good than you might expect.

Despite the questionable submissions thus far, they have provided an interesting question for us to consider: Can the introduction of a technology layer onto a social problem really improve the issue itself? One of the example projects mentioned on the site (although not claimed to be part of this camp’s output) is Fixmystreet.com — a website where UK residents can log complaints about the roadways and other municipal issues in their neighborhoods. The strategy here seems to be, people may have complaints that should make it into the proper authority’s hands, but the barrier is access to that authority. Sure, you can write your local official — but who does? You could even send them an email — but would they read it? Apparently all people really need to open fire on their community’s problems is to provide a forum for them to do that firing in (preferably with a map layer on top of it.) The technological output behind the site is simple: it generates an email to the appropriate official. So it seems what they have proven here is that a task that could be easily accomplished by most, needs a layer of web 2.0-ness to make it a reality. Now I am left with another question: is that really social improvement?

Despite my lack of enthusiasm, this site is making slow but steady progress as some of the issues reported really are being fixed. Too bad the most popular post still seems to be something completely out of the municipality’s control — “Dog Fouling.”