Web 3.0: the change that’s coming

Al Gore achieved what hundreds of scientists and activists had unsuccessfully attempted for decades: to put the global warming risk inside the collective consciousness. His movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, not only succeeded in putting the issue in the media but also launched a succession of documentaries which alert about the collision course human actions are following. We are on our way to destabilizing the planet’s physical and biological systems, which could in turn trigger an irreversible climate disaster.

Home is a new and wonderful attempt to warn us that the Earth is reaching the limit of its ecological balance.

Although it seduces us with its beautiful images and a hint of optimism, the data it presents are alarming:
• 20% of humankind consumes over 80% of the planet’s resources.
• 5,000 people die every day due to polluted water.
• One billion people suffer starvation, and another billion have no access to drinking water.
• Over 50% of the cereal commercialized worldwide is used as food for animals and agro-fuels.
• Thirteen million hectares of forests disappear annually.
• The average temperature of the last 15 years has been the highest ever recorded.
• One in every 4 mammals, one in every 8 fowl, and one in every 3 amphibians are in danger of extinction. Species become extinct at a rhythm 1,000 times faster than is natural.
• Three quarters of fishing resources are exhausted, in decadence, or about to be exhausted.
• 40% of arable lands are degraded.
• World military expenses are 12 times higher than development assistance.

With naked realism, the movie confirms the crucial times we are living in, and, like all the previous attempts, again sets out the stark scenario facing us: “the scientific community affirms that we have only 10 years in which to change our lifestyle to prevent the exhaustion of natural resources and prevent a catastrophic evolution of Earth climate”.

Through YouTube (unfortunately the showing ends, but the movie’s available on Amazon), the filmmakers ask each of us to participate in a collective effort to make as many people as possible aware of these issues. There’s probably no better way than the accessibility of YouTube to do it. It’s the most direct channel to a new generation of more open-minded, sensitive youths. Over a million people saw the English version, and another million saw versions in other languages – and it’s possible that a high number among them will understand that climatic change is already an imminent reality, and not the obsession or paranoia of scientists and activists.

“Understanding is 50% of the solution”, affirms Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka,
but what does it take to complete the other 50%? Once we have understood, what do we do? Will we manage in a few years to change the way we live in and relate to this world?
Is it possible to modify, in just one decade, the ideological culture we have built over more than two hundred years, which has led us to pursue constant growth without considering the environmental and social impacts?

Upton Sinclair affirms that “it’s difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”. If this is true, the odds are against us, since most of us are aligned under the same economic model.

It’s an interesting dilemma, because if we don’t do anything, then neither shall we be able to refreeze the Antarctic ice layer, reforest the Amazonia, stop the methane leaks of the circumpolar tundra, or put the North Atlantic thermohaline current back into circulation.
No, we won’t be able to do any of this.

Our problem is that we have become the first race of people on Earth to lose the practical need for our fellow beings (McKibben). We have lost the community spirit that enabled us to survive for millennia. Unfortunately, we have managed to replace our collective survival instinct with extreme individualism.
The unbridled consumerism towards which the USA evolved, the sublime manifestation of this model, happened with such speed and efficacy that it dragged the rest of humankind along in adopting it or yearning for it. And now it’s so installed in human aspirations that it seems impossible even to imagine a reversion of this inertia – much less its replacement with a conscious and responsible consumption model.

How do we organize a powerful, quick and agreed-upon action in such an individualistic society?
The answer is not easy, and will not come from either governments or companies – if it is to come as urgently as we need it, it will come from the innate community essence in the soul of the human being, which is nowadays numbed by materialistic fascination.

Once we have recovered it (and provided that we manage to awaken it), this essence will have the huge task of invoking collective responsibility, agreeing upon a common vision, and calling for the design of a new operational system (Paul Hawken) under which humankind must work towards the future. A new consumption and production paradigm, a new, more conscious capitalism, a new and sustainable development model.

And it is from among these few possible solutions that the Internet, and especially the web 3.0, arises as the organizational, communitarian and social platform capable of empowering human beings for this profound collaborative action.

There are one and a half billion internauts today. One quarter of humanity begins to populate active social networks and collective participation communities in what seems to constitute the greatest “sociomorphosis” of our history. Facebook grows at a rate of 600,000 people every day, its number of users exceeding the population of Brazil, the fifth most populated country in the world. Digital society begins to join congregations that boost themselves through collaboration, collective construction and participative creation.
The events we are witnessing are creating dynamics that surpass by millions of times the power of our individual capabilities – the minds of the digital world begin to join and create an organized mechanism with an immeasurable potential for action.

Simultaneously, at the very moment when we discover that we are reaching the exhaustion of our natural resources, we are fortunate enough to witness the ignition of a change of paradigm, the democratization of a model: the democratization of knowledge, Wikipedia; of philanthropy, Kiva; of banking, Zopa; of collective creation, Linux.

We have crossed the threshold of a new era. Unfortunately, we go forward without enough understanding of the complex problems facing us. For the purposes of facing this new era, we have germinal tools, whose development time can still be counted in days and which consequently still present certain rudimentary, adjustable, perfectible traits. But, just like Gutenberg had to print hundreds of proofs before he achieved the printings that changed history, at this very moment, minute by minute, second by second, there are arising thousands of applications which invite collective participation and adoption – and, while most of them are consigned to oblivion, many remain, pass the test and scrutiny of hundreds of users, and are adopted to be used by millions of people who seek to improve them and apply them to knowledge, socialization, the creation of communities, and collective mobilization.

Internet is perhaps the super-organism that will enable the creation of the links and social and economic networks where we can act, produce and think collectively with the necessary speed. Maybe on the basis of this social phenomenon being consolidated in the web 3.0 we will be able to find the collective consciousness that will allow us to live in harmony with nature, with our nature and with ourselves.
Photo Philipp Klinger