CRYSTAL BALL 2000

Part 2

THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Whereas I became a cynic and disillusioned with the old world, I have re-found new life, ideals and hope for the future in the birth of the World Wide Web. A metamorphosis in the process of happening will give mankind a new chance and a once in an era challenge. The meteoric rise of the Internet and ensuing globalization characterized by the erosion of national frontiers and the unstoppable neuro-webbing of the globe. A global happening ending an era of a string of localized civilizations and national strife. The dawn of a new era with one civilization girdling the globe.

When civilizations meet, knowledge, technics, social and cultural activities bloom. Great new things happen. And this time we are not even talking about the marriage between two civilizations, but of the total intertwining of all today's contemporary civilizations at once. There is no more buffer space left between nations. Humanity under pressure has become like a liquid suddenly crystallizing. It is turning "solid." It is metamorphosing. It is not going to be a world of nations any longer, but a world of people, with no room left for national expansionism. From now on our Earth is destined to live like an entity, a biological cell, in peace with itself if it does not wish to contemplate to alternative: to perish. A "one world" where the present national boundaries are eroding and under pressure are destined to fragment into small efficient units in the way of City States, Cantons or Provinces and the like, linked together in super-national organizations. Clumsy Super powers running around like bulls in a glasshouse have no place any longer in a full world.

Till recently our way of life and social order has still largely been unaffected, but soon the new era, I coined it: the ERA OF THE HUMAPAN ( from pan-humanity), is going to overturn everything we presumed till now rock solid and eternal. Nothing is going to escape: the political division of the world, the way the State functions, the relationship between the people and the State, the way we live, eat, work and think, do business, run our finances and are educated. A living being does not need a heart, a liver, kidneys, nerves and brains in every separate limb or body section in order to function. There is only one central organ specific for each need which takes care of a living body as a whole. Observing how all human activity on earth is presently irreversibly converging and integrating into one single humapan community, we might well begin to wonder if, what counts for a single living being, might perhaps also be valid for humanity as a whole and, if true, ponder further which regional structures, in such case, which till now catered for regional, read "national" well-being only, might still be needed in a "humapan" society and if not, could be discarded, and what kind of new structures might come to replace them? The micro transistor, the computer and the digitalization of information lead up to the Internet, which holds all the prerequisites to become the world's first shared organ. Within a few traumatic decades of upheaval, our so familiar world, composed of localized national interests, will become totally obsolete and in its place new social and global political structures will rise from scrap. A change far more profound than from hunter to agricultural society or from an agricultural era into the industrial era.

The global Internet unites. Nationalism divides the world. Never before has mankind been torn between such confronting forces.

The Internet is the first strong unifying force mankind has ever had. But it will not stay the only one for long. Many other more unifying forces are readying up in the background already.

The omens do not bode well for the national governments and the United Nations, the present world financial system and conglomerate business enterprises. They will not be able to survive the metamorphosis into the new era. Sharp confrontation is bound to arise between the advocates of change and the entrenched establishment, defending an eroding position and trying in vain to bend the future back through dictatorial measures. How long they will be able stil to hold out is anybodies guess. May be a few years, a few decades. Who knows but in the end the quest for freedom will win.

The Information age should be called the

AGE OF NEURO-WEBBING.

Each individual member of the Humapan, each human activity, and even the planet's inventory are all frantically being registered on data banks, and hooked up to the Web, actively or passively. It is more than just information taking hold of us, it is like the development of A GLOBAL DNA STRUCTURE. A new kind of society, a unitary society is coming into being. A tight neuro-web is being spun over our planet.Data, visual and audio information is becoming one of a kind by digital denomination. Information has begun to fill a common planetary memory brain. Bypassing local nodes and putting all information directly on a global basis will bring far greater efficiency into the affairs of man. Where globalization draws it strength by simplifying and eliminating the unnecessary, all what is national loses out.

Propelled by its sheer practicality and efficiency the Internet is mushrooming. The world could not afford to discard it ever anymore. We might be under the illusion, that we are the ones developing the Internet, but it looks rather that the Internet will be managing us instead! There will be only one way of doing things in the age of neuro-webbing and that will be the Internet way.

The fight for survival on a full planet brings the imperative need for efficiency with it. Efficiency standing here for: globalization, organization and specialization. Efficiency starts with information and where to find it: on the Internet!

The usefulness of a specific "Home country" has disappeared:

KNOWLEDGE IS ONLY ONE DOWNLOAD AWAY!

CLUSTERING

Businesses in the same branch will automatically have their external relations organized along similar patterns, because of similar needs. This entails that their communication requirements must converge and that they should all be accessing the same Web facilities and line-up of memory banks. Common interests will automatically bring their external networks together into specific "net-clusters". In the same way will professionals converge into specific "net-guilds" and socially aligned people join up in "net-societies". Energy is already one of the most globally integrated industries. From extraction to refining, distribution and direct energy generation. Geographically uneconomic oil stocks of one company are being swapped with companies which have customers on the spot. Overcapacity of electric power in one country is being re-distributed to cover shortfall in another. The world's telecoms, which till only recently were restricted to their national grids, are now indulging in an explosion of global mergers and take-overs as could not have been imagined ten years ago. In the tourist industry we see the first signs of a "Travel-Net Cluster", where airlines, hotel chains, catering companies, cruise lines are converging into. All related businesses will in future be strongly pulled together into global association by converging communication needs, info link-ups and memory banks and by the attraction and efficiency of the Internet. The following cross-border interests are prime candidates to converge globally and to condense into virtual mega net-clusters: Agriculture and Food, -Extraction Industries and Raw Materials, -Energy, -Transport, -Travel and Recreation, -Communications, -Chemicals, -Pharma, -Construction, -Textile and Clothing, -Human Resources and Health Matters, -Ecological, Waste and Recycling, -Legal and Security, -Money, Finance and Insurance, -Intellectual and Educational, -Governmental and - An umbrella cluster for all the above. These are going to become the shared organs of a pan-humanity.

With individual interests bundled the participants will soon learn to value their common interests, its limitations and possibilities. Common interests bring common policies and there is a good chance that "self regulation" will find a place among them. The fear that business, unleashed onto the whole planet might go haywire will prove greatly unfounded.

THE DANGER

Till now the governments did not have the slightest idea what was going to hit them, but that is changing. The State is slowly waking up to the seriousness of the threat of the Internet and globalization, menacing their naked existence.

The computer and digitalization of information is going to make it very easy for the State to become "DIGITATORS" and slowly but surely turn their citizens into obedient "DIGITONIANS". Firstly people will be asked innocently to supply more personal and business data to the hungry Compu-State memory banks. Then it will become obligatory. Once the State will have obtained compu-power over its citizens, it will be hard to force the State to relinquish it again. Already at this early stage of the Info-Age that people will have to make up their mind about what kind of creatures they would like to become. If nobody opens his mouth, the future will spell "DIGITONIANS".

THE HUMAPAN GAME

The rules of the game: anything goes! There are three players in the game: the government, the people and business. There is only one playing field, the Internet but with many goals: the Data banks. There is only one accessory: the computer. The game for the government is to get most people and business onto their data banks and get control of the Internet, the people and business. The game for business is to evade the government and taxes and to get as many people as possible on their own data banks. The game for the people is not to get trapped by any data bank, neither the government's nor the business's data banks and to stay free and become global citizens.

We are only in the first few minutes of the game and the governments are already trying to change the rules by tilting the level global playing field into their favor, dividing the field up into separate national patches and seduce the unsuspecting players to their data banks with sweet promises of subsidies, security and welfare. Business in the meantime is handing out free cookies to get the people on its data banks and is rapidly moving out of government and shareholders' control, leaving the government less tax income and the share-holders less dividends. Most people players are still totally in the lurch about the game and the few who have some idea are at odds on how to play it.

Part 1

Part 3

Final Part

Hans Schicht
Lake Chapala, Mexico
30 December 1999
Also by Hans Schicht


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