(MB note: The following is part of a new article I’m writing on maps of the future. As I develop the article I’ll post my research here, highlighting some of my favorite maps.)

On January 17th the following things happened:

Protesters gathered in groups and attempted to walk into the town centre; police fired live shots and tear gas canisters to disperse them.  Three protesters were seriously injured and one shot dead.

Police battled youths who set fire to roadblocks; the police shot indiscriminately, “targeting anyone on sight”; one man was shot in the stomach as he stood in front of his house.

A 13-year old boy was laid to rest next to his uncle´s house; the burial was attended by hundreds of residents who wailed and lit up bonfires.

Most likely, you didn’t hear or see these stories, except in perhaps an aggregate way: they all happened in Kenya, a result of the post-election violence which engulfed the country.  In situations such as these, the major media outlets give the world a “big picture” view of the crisis: violence, rioting, bloodshed, deaths. But the individual events, the microcosmic acts of violence, go largely unreported.  They aren’t, however, unseen.

In the days following the Kenyan crisis, a group of Kenyan bloggers from both inside and outside of the country got together and created a website to map the spread of violence.  The site, called Ushahidi, allows users to report incidents of violence (as well as peace efforts) via the web or SMS.  Incidents are verified and then uploaded to Ushahidi’s site and displayed on a geo-tagged map.   The site also features a tool that allows for a “timeline” view of events (see below). The value of the site isn’t in its archival capabilities; as Global Voice’s Ethan Zuckerman wrote in this post, the importance of Ushahidi is helping people visualize the spread of violence in real time.

Why is this important? With all of the famines, wars, floods and other crises in the world today, what good will visualizing the chaos in Kenya do?  Friend and fellow blogger Erik Hersman, one of the founders of Ushahidi, answers this question in the most eloquent way I’ve seen yet.  In this post he suggests that a digitally connected world not only grants us a front row seat to the rest of the world, but also the power to influence events and create change in a way that was impossible just a few short decades ago.  So that events that may occur thousands of miles away are in fact - quite literally - in our digital backyard.  Which makes it a lot harder to just sit back and watch.

Ushahidi is a potent example of the power of what I (and many others) call “collaborative cartography.” Rather than simply create user-generated maps of local wifi hotspots or cool coffee shops, however, maps like Ushahidi have the potential to effect change. As part of its annual conference, Netsquared is hosting a competition to identify the best mapping mashups geared toward accelerating social change. Ushahidi is in the running, as are others like the Rosetta Project. Voting is open to the public until the end of the day Friday; the top twenty will receive a share of $100k in prize money to further develop their sites.   You can support projects like Ushahidi by voting here.

Laurent Haug (co-founder of the LIFT conferences) wrote a fabulous post recently called “Eight Things I Think I Think”  - an intriguing list of things he knows, but isn’t sure why. A few years ago Edge co-founder John Brockman published a great book on a similar topic, a compilation of answers to the question: “What do you believe is true even though you can’t prove it?”

It’s a perfect exercise for a futurist who is asked on a regular basis “what do you think will happen in the future?” (the problem with that question being that I always feel compelled to provide an answer that is what I call provokacredible - that is, thought-provoking enough to earn my stripes as a futurist, but credible enough to keep me gainfully employed).

But sometimes, like tonight, as I approach the almost-end of the week I realize that my brain cells are numb from too much email and I’m listing too far towards the present and not enough into the future. And so I found Laurent’s post - and a fabulous Oregon Coast Pinot Noir - a welcome antidote, reminding me that sometimes, as Malcolm Gladwell would say, it’s better to blink, not think.  And so in the spirit of great blog posts that make you think (kudos, Laurent) here’s my own list of things I think I think:

Privacy is an antiquated notion. Our current arguments about both online and offline privacy will be seen by future generations at best as quaint and naive, at worst, as narrow-minded and ignorant.

Cybership will become more important than citizenship.

In the next five years bottled water-drinkers will be as socially marginalized as cigarette smokers (ok, this is one I actually hope for).

Both Malcolm Gladwell and Duncan Watts are wrong: ideas propagate because of platforms, not people. The social media sphere has become the primary means for disseminating information and ideas throughout society.

In the next decade we will develop a pharmacological cure for sleep.  And maybe - just maybe - that’s a good thing.

Breakthroughs in genomics and neuroscience will spark a widespread debate about “what it means to be human” that will become the primary focus of public discourse over the next two decades, fracturing religions and spurring geo-political conflicts.

DNA and social capital will become primary currencies in the future, complete with their own markets, traders and fluctuating value indexes.

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p.s. -   Laurent: deepest apologies for stealing your idea, but many thanks for the inspiration and mental nudge.  I owe you a beer at LIFT.  Or an Oregon Pinot.