Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Web 2.0 - The Big Picture

Congratulations! Time Magazine voted "YOU" as the Person of the Year for 2006. Could you ever in your wildest dreams have imagined that! How did something like that happen to you, of all people? Why did you win the person of the year? Well, turns out, "you" does mean all people. You, me, we are the person of the year because we are part of a phenomenon. We are lucky enough to be around in the part of history where the purpose of human occupation on Earth is coming to fruition.

Earth is a living organism on a developmental path. It is evolving just as all life evolves. Earth has been considered the mother of life, but she is much more than that. Nature births us, nurtures us, sustains us, and teaches us. We grow, progress and come to know ourselves and the environment around us. Why is this? Is there a reason for it?

We are conscious beings but only part of a bigger whole. Just as our heart muscle is a pump made of many cells working together in harmony, we people are the developing nerve cells of a much bigger organism we know as Earth, who is also named Gaia. Our study of biology and physiology shows that nerves are a communication system and relay for awareness. We are made from Earth. We are sentient beings. We are small. The Earth is big. We are part of a greater being. The Earth!

Phone lines, radio, television, cable, cell phones, the World Wide Web, email, the blogosphere, RSS, places like Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, FaceBook, CraigsList, etc. It is all part of the Earth's evolving nervous system. We are putting it together because that is what we are programmed to do as nerve cells of the Earth. It is no accident that humankind dominates the Earth. It happened as a result of our language skills, technical ingenuity, and cooperation as social beings. We build relationships and our biggest relationship is with Gaia herself.

We create communities and they merge to create even larger communities which integrate to become one large community and what happens in the community becomes instantly known to everyone in it. That is what we are doing. We are growing not just as humans; we are growing as part of the Earth. The Earth is one massive living organism, and the human community is its evolving nervous or communication system. That system takes billions of people all over the world and a way to connect them, like the World Wide Web. It is a good start. Web 2.0 is the natural progress of that system as a development of community in a global media.

You are part of that community. You are part of the great being called Earth, but not just any part. You are part of its nervous system, its consciousness! That makes "YOU" Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2006! And because of you, we are well on our way to the year where Gaia also receives that honor.

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