Can you sense a virtual culture emerging?

In Japan, the PC is becoming passé – mobile technology is displacing it. Computing is becoming less something we do at our desk and more an integral part of our moment-to-moment existence. Is this surprising? We’ve been carrying around a massively powerful mobile computer since birth. We’re simply extending who we are – from inward to outward; human beings are moving from isolated nodes to a ubiquitously connected network. 

In yet another example of this convergence, 34 companies have been quietly conspiring with big brother Google to blow the doors off of ubi-computing. Just announced yesterday is the OHA, a consortium headed by Google that is introducing a true open-source mobile computing environment. This is staggeringly good news for those who see free, virtual information as an important tool towards global understanding, compassion, and reconciliation.

Google sells more ads, humanity gets connected as never before. I like the trade-off. According to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, the new “Android“ environment will soon be powering “thousands of mobile computing devices” (curious note: Eric also sits on Apple’s board).  Walls are falling down around us. The peer-to-peer era is unfolding faster than most predicted.

Headline today:

Most Fans Paid $0 for Radiohead Album

But read beyond the headlines. Radiohead risked everything, abandoned the record company model, and offered their new record directly to their fans on an honor system. Pay what you think the record is worth. Indeed, 60% of the 1.2 million downloaders paid nothing. But 40% did pay – and those 40% averaged $8.05 each. That’s a gross profit to Radiohead of $3.86 million in just 30 days. And none of that gets shared with a record company. A wild success by any standard.

Ubiquitous networking is here, and it is working. Compared to the models it is replacing, P2P is nothing short of healthy social anarchy. It is rewriting the essential nature of commerce, politics… and religion. It is rapidly replacing the dominance machine. I read articles about “bloggers and their audiences” and realize that the prevailing paradigm still doesn’t get it. Such thinking implies a fading duality, “like the distinction between those who read a newspaper and those who write it.” (HT Bob Carlton). 

The blogosphere, the glocal conversation, is simultaneously creator and audience – talker and listener. And in the best Quaker traditions, the voices who truly have something to say rise consensually to the front, but then must allow the conversation to continue freely, without central control. The spotlight becomes a floodlight. The hard line that once divided speaker and audience melts under the heat of that incredibly bright light.

A common voice is emerging, one that finds unity in diversity; wisdom in crowds. Unfamiliar voices that were once an excuse to build fences are becoming a metaphor of Jn 17 – a challenge towards open doors and unbounded unity. If enemies are to be loved, who can be against us? The emerging global-virtual community clarifies: what we do to others, we do to ourselves.

HeQi : Empty Tomb

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Microclesia, Transition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.