The Candy Map Manifesto

We declare that it is the right of all peoples to acquire and consume as much sugar as is humanly possible in any form imaginable. As the veil begins to thin and we honor our ancestors as is the tradition on October 31 and November 1, it is imperative that spirits are high. In order to ensure maximum intake of the appropriate confectionery delights (aka all of them) I would propose a candy map. The map’s purpose would be to share knowledge of availability, location, and type of candy that is available. With the change of trick-or-treating from an all out assault on sweets to a careful maneuvering of connections and relations that ends in an ever decreasing amount of candy corn and marzipan fruits, the counter intuitive reversal of acquisition of all that is candied needs to be opposed and fought.

I propose that we band together to increase the potential of candy acquisition in 2009 through the use of geographic information and social networking (it’s a little late to start this year). I suggest that next year we combine the strengths of webmapping/mobile mapping and GeoRSS in order to create a realtime map of when different locals celebrate and locations with the best candy and possibly provide a way to vet locations to help parents find places they feel safe taking their children. Yeah, that is it. Maybe not ‘manifesto’ worthy, but I wanted to toss it out there. I will mention that candymap.org is available if anyone wants to get this started 🙂