As I wrote in Part 1, us, rotting in front of the screen actually unites people as world citizens and increases awareness of global challenges.

See how this opens up new possibilities of action to solve our pressing issues like climate change, to influence policy on a high level and also how the future of politics look like.

This blog series will hopefully give you a little bit of peace back and explains, how we all benefit from your nights in front of the screen.

Plus, it will show you WHAT YOU GET AS A RESULT.

Part 1: Society

Part 2: Movements & Politics

Part 3: Education and Science

Part 4: Economics

Special-Part 5: The Challenges of the Future

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“Humankind finds itself engaged in ‘an act of suicide on a grand scale’” — Prince Charles

If we continue with our political and economic systems, the chances for a worldwide collapse within the next 50 years are pretty high. Other scientists also agree.

We’re expecting a drastic decrease in living conditions, also in the western world — and that is just the best case scenario.

As a strong example, the climate change had already severe effects on the well being of the planet and humanity.

The scientific consensus is clear: Climate Change is happening, life threatening and a result of human actions.

Where politics falls short in action to do something about it, we have to step in and use our gained unity to influence political decisions and to alter the course of history.

But why should we have any power as citizens?

1. BECAUSE OF GLOBAL MOVEMENTS,

THAT GROW WITHIN WEEKS

HOW WAS IT BEFORE THE INTERNET?

To influence politics and history as a citizen you had to gather masses of people behind you. That’s how it always went, from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela to Gandhi.

Think back to the time when there was no Internet and how hard it was to reach the right people. You could only have great exposure with access to mass media. Additionally you had to spend your whole life for a single cause. The barriers of action and participation were incredibly high.

HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THIS FOR THE BETTER?

Today a grass-roots movement can grow into a full blown social storm within weeks or a few months.

The biggest one the Internet has seen so far was the fight against SOPA with millions of engaged people and over 100k websites entering the protest — Massive, just massive!

SOPA was proposed law which would have destroyed the fundamentals of the Internet itself — free flow of information.

Eventually the bill got kicked and was never put in action.

WHAT DO YOU GET FROM BEING ADDICTED?

With the Internet, you got handed a tool to do something about your political or social frustration. The barriers of getting active are lowered so heavily, that you can easily find the right people to join your cause.

Please, for one time, child. Do something useful with your addiction and make a change in this world! :)

2. BECAUSE OF HIGHER TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN POLITICS

HOW WAS IT BEFORE THE INTERNET?

Transparency of political actions was not possible due to the technological limitations of the old media. Only a few stories were able to reach the masses and provoke an outrage, so not many people knew about what’s going on.

Those who did had a hard time holding politicians accountable for their actions, because they either had to go the legal way or spend years to gather enough people to enforce a change.

HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THIS FOR THE BETTER?

With online platforms like Wikileaks or Transparency International collecting and visualising political actions, there can be widespread exposure of critical information.

With that, the awareness rises an outcry can happen and suddenly makes politicians (in)directly accountable for their actions — they mostly react in changing policy. But we’re still far away from being at a satisfying point of accountability, since politics only change their course when the headwind gets too strong. Everything else just passes by.

WHAT DO YOU GET FROM BEING ADDICTED?

Yeah, here is actually the bad news. Being aware of so much corruption and misconduct is depressing. It really is.

There is only one good thing about it — the awareness.

It is the first step of change. So let’s f******g do something about it!

PS: Are you aware that you are actually the first generation being able to do something about it?

3. BECAUSE IN THE FUTURE WE WILL BE CROWDSOURCING POLITICS

HOW WAS IT BEFORE THE INTERNET?

Our current form of representative democracy is like this because it hasn’t been possible to integrate 100k people efficiently into the generation of knowledge and then into making decisions. That is because it relies on a technology which is 500 years old, book printing.

HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THIS FOR THE BETTER?

With the internet, we got the technological foundation to make citizen participation and crowdsourcing of political decisions a reality.

Initiatives like Liquid Democracy e.V. or Democracy OS (Argentina) already developed and implemented software to make that possible.

But they are far from “in the process”. We’re going to have a long way to bring those into action on a grand scale.

WHAT DO YOU GET FROM BEING ADDICTED?

When we arrive at said point in time, you will have the possibility to vote on various issues directly, without any detour. You can make your opinion count and more society-centered policies can be made.

Although there is one catch — You, and how much you know about

the topics you vote on

CONCLUSION

The Internet unites us and makes it possible to have our voices not only heard, but to have an impact. Massive online movements are already changing policy and the history of humanity.

But to tackle our future challenges, we have to even go a step further and aim to make crowdsourcing of decisions a reality.

It is highly necessary to integrate every possible perspective into political decisions efficiently.

WHAT’S NEXT?

The problem is that in order to make objective political decisions as an individual, you have to be well educated, and not only at the issue at stake.

Unfortunately, our current analogue educational systems will not be able to fill this knowledge gap.

Fortunately, science has already made huge progress in quality with the help of the Internet and laid the groundwork for better education.

See in the next post how the Internet brings up chances to make education scalable and effective as well as how it has and continue to revolutionise the scientific process.

Part 1: Society

Part 2: Movements & Politics

Part 3: Education and Science

Part 4: Economics

Special-Part 5: The Challenges of the Future

This blog is part of the project:

“WorldBrain — Verifying the Internet”

Our drive and passion is to use the internet as the greatest tool to serve humanity. We want to create a better world with empathy, knowledge and perspectives.