Three Futurist Ideas

In my essay on March 24, 2006, Focalize, Vocalize, Localize, I imagined that an organization – maybe more than one – could target areas of interest and concern to communities around the globe, target them so that they could be addressed by bloggers and other new media participants including journalists, academics, kids – no restrictions, and followed by residents of the new media at a specific date and time. In this way, the attention of communities small and large and even global, could be brought to bear on topics that otherwise are discussed in such a random and dispersed manner that they disappear for all intents and purposes. Kind of like Earth Day except every day – and maybe every hour – something, somewhere on Earth is focused upon. The input for what is to be focused upon could come from everywhere but some group of people would have to filter through all of that using a fair formula so that no country, no community, no region is ignored because of relative economic or political power or position. Let’s call this Big Idea Number One.

Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity, and former President of Poland – a person who knows the power of leverage even when most of the world did not – had some very interesting things to say at a lecture given at the Armand Hammer World College this past week in my town. He pointed out that when he was a dissident, in the “bad old days” of the Soviet Union and the captive Eastern Block, it was difficult to connect with others of like mind and even more importantly, it seemed like the fate of the world would always be determined by who had the most weaponry. And for Poland – how many tanks and machine guns were pointing at your head. But he knew that ideas were more powerful than weapons. Even with twentieth century methods of communication – telephones, writing, leaflets – it was possible to overthrow an empire. But the first thing that he wanted his audience and the world to understand is that the internet has – without any direction whatsoever – succeeded in globalizing the world in terms of information. The second and most important thing that he wanted his audience to understand was that in a global economy, a now almost entirely market-driven economy, consumers have the power to turn the wheel, push the gas pedal, and hit the brakes. They only need to understand that. And when they do, we can change the world.

As with other imagining about a way to bring the world’s attention – its focus – on issues from all over the world, imagine if consumers could, through the internet, form coalitions where the power of numbers united by the power of ideas could be focused on institutions, politicians, corporations – every single estate to bring about change. This would be the conversion of information into involvement in a way the world has never seen except on those occasions such as Lech Walesa experienced where a simple set of ideas spread like a virus and grabbed the world’s attention and changed it forever. Talk about a way to take something that has been done before many times in the old ways and powering it up with the new ways! Let’s call this Big Idea Number Two.

How about the quality and reliability of the information? This is another hole that needs to be filled. So much of what is expressed in blogs and really all over the web is of personal interest – really more like person to person communication and that’s a great thing because when it happens globally it changes the world without anyone having to direct it, just like Lech Walesa said about the world in general. But one problem is that when it comes to news, and reporting and investigating what’s happening in the world, very few non-journalists are equipped and have the experience, the training, the time, the money to really investigate and report to the new media world. And so, we seem to have fewer journalists working for fewer organizations disseminating what they’ve gathered to a much larger audience. That means that more and more of the information we get – the “news” – is recycled and copied. Can we find a way to increase the number of news gatherers, investigators so that we get a commensurate increase in the sources and diversity of the information? What we need is kind of a new media news organization that finds a way to organize and perhaps even pay people to do a professional job from everywhere around the globe. News gatherers and investigators who are beholden to a global community of media consumers and interests. Is this really important? Well when you consider the fact that almost all the major newspapers and new media disseminators of content are owned by a few corporations that are tied in with a few of the most powerful governments on the planet, I think there might be a problem. Of course, existing news organizations can change with the times and find ways to be directly accountable, such as those involved with this blog. The fact that Reuters and the BBC are sponsoring the We Media Global Forum says a great deal about their vision of the future. Hopefully more news organizations will also embrace change. Let’s call this Big Idea Number Three.

So there you go, three big futurist ideas. Who knows whether any of them will come to pass?

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