A Social Network for Saving the World in the Age of Cyclones, Volcanoes, and Global Pandemics (1)
Chapter 1: Start At The Beginning
The part that we easily forget when we try to do things is define who we’re doing it for. Most of us go straight to the “why,” and it’s easy because it’s almost always about wealth, fame, or “saving the world.” And one of the worst assumptions anyone can make is that “if you can find a reason to build something people will understand why it’s important, and they will just be very happy for it.” This is what’s wrong with our approach to doing anything, including governance and our very concept of what innovation is. There is always that idea of being a provider for everyone else who are, by default, just the beneficiary. We keep on doing things that we single-handedly determine to be a good idea that we can make people want, whether they actually need it or not. It’s a template that’s tantalizingly easy to think of as the requirement for success, especially with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg as the model, and the billions of dollars he and his company are worth as the goal.
Unfortunately, the path to success for people like Mark Zuckerberg only makes sense in specific circumstances. They made things that people didn’t know they needed, but it doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone who will try to follow their footsteps. There are things about successful people that we mistake as a common trait, and we think that it makes our approach just as qualified. The most obvious is that one doesn’t need to be exceptionally rich to make an impact in the world, as in the case of Mr. Zuckerberg, and you also don’t need a lot of formal education as the Wright Brothers have proved. These are people separated by an eternity of time, of course, but all of them are good examples of how single-mindedness can make almost anything possible. Neither Wilbur nor Orville Wright finished high school, and yet on the 17th of December 1903 the brothers flew an airplane they built out of scrap materials for 59 seconds over a distance of 852 feet — the first time that human beings sat on a motor-driven machine and traveled across the air. And just like Mr. Zuckerberg, the Wright brothers were celebrated by Kings and Queens and made a lot of money from inventing something.
You and I would be tempted to think that “hey, we can do that too!” And while it’s certainly possible what we often neglect to consider is that Mark Zuckerberg built something that filled the need of libidinous male college students to gawk at pictures of pretty classmates they were too scared to talk to, and the Wright brothers gave humanity the skies. We no longer have the benefit of being genuinely original, and the extreme example of what it takes to be relevant in the 21st century is to build fantastic rockets like Elon Musk and make bold claims of taking man to live on another planet.
What most of us make are apps, and most of the apps we make do similar things as hundreds of others like it. Often, with the slightest difference in the mechanics of how they‘re supposed to make life better, or at least help anyone humble-brag using a picture of his lunch. Of course, whatever we make have their own purpose and value, but we’ve come to the point that what we’re doing is like making and selling many different kinds of cars with their own unique bells and whistles. All of the cars that have been built are useful, but all of them also run on the same engine that gave the world greenhouse gas emissions since the moment it was first fired-up in the late 1700s.
Motor vehicles are a good example of something that was never invented with “who it was for” in mind. It’s original makers and the ones that made it better since have only thought of why it was needed. Cars were made because we needed better transportation (after bicyclists campaigned for better roads), and then because it was good business. But in all the time that we’ve been using motorized vehicles we never really considered how we would have to pay for the penalty of failing to invent something that was genuinely better. Just like with cars, we’ve taken care of the reason why we make things but completely forgotten for whom we make them for — humans that need breathable air to survive.
In our time, social media is the new automobile in regard to its lack of thoughtful consideration. Social media was made because it gave us a better way to communicate, and just like motor vehicles it works just fine and obviously very profitable. But should we wait another century before thinking about the possibility of the social equivalent of a climate crisis? I wouldn’t recommend it, I’ve seen first-hand the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda when it made landfall in the Philippines in 2013. Storms and social media are two different things, of course, but only because the threat of typhoons is nothing compared to the impact of social media on human life and global affairs. False news, propaganda, bullying, ignorance peddling and many other kinds of harm that are already turning our real-world social culture into a toxic stew — and it’s just a preview of the coming storm.
The problem is that social media was never designed to be anything other than a place where human beings can do what they want without any rules. It sounds like fun, but only if you think gladiatorial combat is fun in the style of Ancient Rome. It’s fun when you’re winning, but for most people who are not equipped or prepared to survive in a place governed by mobs — social media is a nightmare. The definition of right and wrong on social media is a nebulous thing, the shapes that we see in clouds are probably more real compared to the morality of a mob. This is what makes social media an enigma of our modern life: we need it but we really don’t.
We have this problem now because when the most important tool of modern mass communication was made we only asked why— and the answer was simply that we needed a better way to connect human beings and it’s a good way to make money. The hype of social media being a tool to build communities is, quite honestly, comparable only to the personal connections between ancient hooligans who sat together eating peanuts while watching gladiators pound each other’s face with blunt instruments. It does help build communities sometimes, but it doesn’t take very long before everyone in it realizes they have the power to enjoy life and social death. This is what happens when you make something that you do not clearly define who it must benefit and in what way. The honest choice, of course, is almost always everyone or ourselves.
You simply cannot create a community just by erecting the buildings and houses, you’ll only succeed in creating shelter for people who don’t really care for each other. The people who will move in will not have a common sense of purpose nor a culture of collaboration, and a community is only as good as the quality of its purpose and its culture. Even the finest palace that you build cannot turn barbarians into something that they’re not. This is just as true for an actual place as it is for a digital space, if you want to build a community you have to start at the beginning. If you don’t have the patience to create the purpose and demonstrate its value you will end up with a horde. And you can do many things with a horde, but none of it will be of any value to humanity.
The age of a technology-empowered citizenry is already upon us, and it allows individuals to make real choices between what they believe in and what people try to peddle them. You could invest millions in technology or ideas that you think will change the world, and all of it will live or die depending on whether they match what people want to define them. There’s a majority of us now that want to save the planet, to plant forests that make oxygen, to ride bicycles, clean the oceans, fight tyranny, and also to find safety in numbers in the midst of cyclones, volcanoes, and global pandemics. People need a platform that’s built on a genuine culture of community, and it has to be something that’s completely new because we’re no longer building for the future that’s already here. The platform that people need is for what comes next — a common ground where we thrive as others thrive and, as we always imagined, to finally become a better version of ourselves.
