Orangutan fingers by a Korean

Can I use the phrase "mind blowing" or does that date me too much?

I say "mind blowing" because I was reading a book called Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky about the revolution in social organization with web sites like the photo-sharing site Flickr and decided to visit Flickr and typed in the word "orangutan."

Guess what? I got 43,000 photos. I don't think I can count that high.

That number is amazing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that scientists estimate that there are only 60,000 wild orangutans in existence.

Most of the orangutan photos are not likely of wild orangutans. And so I imagine that some of the same orangutans in zoos and rehabilitation centres must have been photographed more than once.

But what is amazing is that there is a community out there of people photographing orangutans. Who the hell are all these people? Where does that interest come from?

But there is something even more interesting about the Flickr phenomenon and what it means for saving orangutans.

The ways of organizing people in the past relied on structures of organization, and the larger the group and the bigger the organization, the father the individual at the bottom was from really feeling involved.

The same is true of the orangutan organizations trying to save orangutans. These organizations, no matter how well meaning they are, perpetuate the same structures that separate individuals from action. You don't really feel like you are directly involved and making an individual difference. It's not immediate in the way that inpires us to action.
But that all changes with the Internet and the way people can organize themselves to take action.

I wonder if something like that could happen with a desire to save orangutans and how it would be accomplished. Could a community of those interested in saving orangutans organize itself on the Internet through something like Flickr to shift the use in consumer products using palm oil away from what is destroying the rain forest and thus orangutans? Could that happen? Or am I dreaming out loud?

Meanwhile, if you want to have a look at the 43,000 orangutans photos, click here.

Let me know if you look at all the orangutan photos. I wonder how long that would take.

orangutan origami by origami master on flickr