Of Mountaintops and Mashups

One of the great things about technology — aside from the geeky awesome gadgets that Taylor and I crush on — is the unprecedented access to information that it gives to the individual.  Indeed, sometimes too much access, as evidenced by the 800+ unread items in my Google Reader inbox.

I have been so behind on reading my feeds this week that I briefly skimmed and then discarded a gem of a post over on the official Google blog, written by none other than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  Luckily, Taylor saw it too and brought it back to my attention.  What a champ.

In his post, Kennedy writes about his involvement in the fight against “mountaintop removal” coal mining.  He explains the devastation caused by this process with some mind-blowing statistics:

Each day coal companies detonate 2500 tons of explosives – the power of a Hiroshima bomb every week – to blow away Appalachian mountaintops to reach the coal seams beneath. Colossal machines then plow the rock and debris into the adjacent river valleys and hollows, destroying forests and burying free-flowing mountain streams, flattening North America’s most ancient mountain range. According to the EPA, 1,200 miles of American rivers and streams have already been permanently interred, leaving behind giant pits and barren moonscapes, some as large as Manhattan Island.

Fascinating, and certainly the first time I’d ever heard of such a thing.  Yet another reason to expedite investment in alternate energy sources.  Harvesting coal out of the earth is one thing: having the audacity to rip the tops off of mountains to get to it is quite another.  If we’re going to be pillaging the earth’s resources for a while until we figure out a better way, shouldn’t we at least pillage responsibly?

But why is Kennedy telling us all this on a Google blog?  While his post is certainly raising awareness about this huge and largely unknown mining method, it is also drawing attention to one of the great phenomena to emerge from Web 2.0: the mashup.

One hardly needs the Wikipedia definition to figure out what a mashup is.  It’s exactly what it sounds like: two or more sources of information on the web “mashed” together to make a new, useful tool.  For some examples, check out Mashup Awards which recognizes some of the best mashups on the web.  My favorite mashup this past summer was HousingMaps, which plots Craigslist housing ads on a map.

Indeed, some of the most useful mashups have Google Maps as a common ingredient, and such is the case for the mashup that RFK Jr. plugs in his Google post.  On the End Mountaintop Removal website, visitors are able to plug in their zipcode to see if they have a “connection” to mountaintop removal.  And indeed, as the site mentions: “If your home or business is on the electric grid, chances are you are connected to mountaintop removal in the Appalachian Mountains.”  Below is a screenshot of the map that popped up when I entered my information:

By plotting information from their extensive database of the relationships between coal mines and power companies on a Google Map, and by instantaneously serving it on a user-customized basis, End Mountaintop Removal is able to provide a stunningly informative tool to spread its message.  The highlighted power plant near Washington is the closest facility to my zip code owned by Pepco, which controls most of the Potomac-area power supply.  The icons to which it is connected by red lines represent the different mining sites where mountaintop removal is performed.

Who would have thought that some of the light being generated by my lamp is being powered by the destruction of mountains?  In two clicks, my understanding of the origins of the very energy that is allowing me to write this post has been transformed.  That is the promise of this powerful medium, and it’s just getting started.