Chris Blattman is a blogger I’ve been following, after him having been recommended by Kenyan blogger White African as one of the folks in the New Media covering the events of the Kenyan presidential election aftermath. Early this morning he asked the question of why Google Earth activism matters, and why it is anything more than fascinating. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that someone like him, someone who’s familiar with the severity of what’s going on in Kenya doesn’t see the real world value and usability of a utility like Ushahidi.

I had a conversation with a buddy of mine who often hangs out with the Google.org folks, coincidentally, where the same topic of discussion came up. Amongst all the other topics we talked about, most interesting is the work they’re doing with crisis management, and that the types of things they’re doing with Google Earth mashing it up with inventory and shipping databases, it comes down to a situation where lives are being saved.

In Kenya, tools like this allow folks like Ellen Petry Leanse, who recently guest posted at Guy Kawasaki’s blog about the ordeal she went through as she left the country after a visit with her twelve year old son. The Ushahidi tool didn’t exist during most of her evacuation ordeal, but a great deal of her problems may have been eliminated if she were able to point to a map of known areas of violence and plan a route around it, or use it as leverage to convice drivers or pilots that the area she was in was safe to evacuate from.

Beyond that, think about how you’d feel if revolution were going on around you? Folks, we tune into the radio and our mobile computing devices on a daily basis just to find out if there’s a traffic jam between us and our destination. To say that it isn’t useful to know if there is a violent uprising between us and our destination is a tiny bit short-sighted.

Beyond just the mashups of Google Earth, I’m glad to see that awareness of the plight of Kenya beyond just the tight-knit community of Kenyan bloggers is rising. Today, Google cross-posted on the the YouTube blog as well as the Google Public Policy blog on how the New Media is playing a role in the dissemination of information in the presence of an official media blackout:

Just a few months before the election, Kenya’s largest broadcaster, NTV Kenya, started a YouTube channel to broadcast news from around Kenya. Though Kenya’s third-world economy affords less than 1% of its citizens broadband Internet access, NTV Kenya’s YouTube presence has become a critical way for the Kenyan diaspora to connect with what’s happening back home. The channel already has almost 3,000 subscribers and is one of the top 100 channels viewed in the last month on YouTube. The channel documents the death and violence, but it also broadcasts the efforts of the international community to rescue the nation from internal strife…

A conversation amongst YouTubers — Kenyans and others — has developed over the conflict there, and the National Democratic Institute (a global nonprofit that provides election assistance in Kenya and other fledgling democracies) has started a channel that documents the election efforts in Nairobi and beyond.

That’s exactly what’s going on with this new crop of Web 2.0 applications cropping up in other parts of the world less concerned by the portability and ownership of their private data, and more concerned with how to avoid or survive the next ethnic cleansing, car bombing, natural disaster or rebel uprising. Quite honestly, as someone who deals with non-life threatening issues involved in the business of technology, social media and Web 2.0 on a daily basis, it’s a bit gratifying and validating to see these tools have an impact beyond making life more fun or easy.

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