A humanist, ecological, and technological call to action.
Change today is happening faster than ever before. We are overwhelmed by new technologies and an excess of information, and we feel that we and what we used to think of as society are being suffocated. Those who drive this change pursue primarily two goals: profit and power. They lure us with clickbait and abuse us as a data pool, reducing our existence to one of human resource and consumer. In doing so they threaten our democracy, our diversity, even our humanity itself.
It doesn’t have to be like this, thinks humanist and entrepreneur Christopher Peterka. Instead of basing our ambition on purely economic yield, he pleads for a radical new dialogue about being human: Who do we want to be? How do we want to live together as a society? What meaning is our ambition meant to have? We have to consider these questions afresh, because if we don t do so, others will. But this means leaving behind short term solutions, and taking a stance against the current system to throw off the shackles that tie us down.
Your Choice is a call to action that encourages us to challenge the status quo and to bring lasting change as progressive optimists.
We as a species created the challenge of acceleration and bewilderment we face today. Our choice is whether we take on the responsibility to deal with it and retain our agency as we do so, or cave in to fatalism.
We are experiencing a new modernity, but we also realise we are doing so on drugs: and this is not a good basis for doing what we just said we have a choice to do: to accept responsibility.
Holding on to the dichotomy real/virtual does more damage than it helps, and the learning curve and potential for positive change if they are seen together is extraordinary.
We need to examine our habit of being too busy with inherited values instead of using the resources we have at our disposal in abundance intelligently.
As a completely globally networked society we will not get around basing our economy on the real cost of everything.
It is worth finding the positions that have a disproportional leverage and use them positively: the hidden places of power and impact.
Exponentiality has been elevated to a morbid religion and we are now at the point on this curve where we have to find a way to turn it into a human horizon.
We have to learn to leave things be, to do those things that need to be done if we don’t want to drastically shorten our time on earth: prioritise.
Being human in the age of digital modernity means fusing with our technology.
To overcome the destructive handling of our planet and ourselves, we need a new narrative of which everyone can say: yes, that’s where we want to go.
We will want to welcome two billion new brothers and sisters, and this cannot be a case of them against us. Everybody’s welcome. Alone sucks. Two billion new brothers and sisters and friends: that’s awesome too.
If we want to be able to deal with this disruption it makes more sense to think of a network of beings, rather than thinking of a technology internet with us as humans separate from it.
What we think of the comfort zone is a death trap but it’s not about torturing ourselves in discomfort, it’s about finding new and better ways of being comfortable: let’s explore a new kind of comfort zone.
If we are thinking of an Internet of Beings then it is essential we examine what ‘inter’ and ‘net’ mean: the communication between entities, and the net as a central infrastructure that is adequate for this new type of being.
The ‘magic of the 51’. Changing everything is not possible and not necessary overnight. Changing enough is enough. The Simple Choice: looking forward or looking back.
