U2’s frontman and noteworthy activist takes his turn during the Yahoo Answers “Ask the Planet” promotion and asks for suggestions on battling the problem of global poverty.
Back when Bono was the young and defiant face of U2, minus the sunglasses and stubble of today, it was easy to look at him and think the band would change the world. As the band ascended on the global stage, it has been Bono who has been most visible in trying to enable those changes.
Besides the meetings with global leaders, and the establishment of the ONE campaign to make poverty history, Bono has spoken extensively with the media about the efforts he supports. Now he has offered his name to the Yahoo Answers audience, and asked them a question:
“What can we do to make poverty history?”
Yahoo Answers has featured other notable people in its Ask the Planet promotion. Before Bono’s question appeared today, eminent physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking asked “How can the human race survive the next hundred years?”
That question has drawn 15,895 answers to date. Suggestions like colonizing other planets, a theory espoused by Dr. Hawking himself, found their way to Yahoo Answers.
While there probably is not a single answer that by itself offers the solution to the problem, parts of various answers may be helpful in constructing an overarching approach to surviving the next century. That may also hold true for Bono’s question on poverty.
Yahoo Answers does for modern web users what Usenet did long before Tim Berners-Lee conceived of the World Wide Web. It provides a forum, in a rich graphical format, for people to post questions and sift through answers to find the best response.
Like Usenet, posting a question does not always attract the best answers it can. That’s part of public participation; everyone has a different take on a subject, and some are more useful than others.
For a little while, Yahoo Answers may have a little impact on the way its users think about social issues. That has to be a good thing.
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
