Chapter 6
DAWN OF THE AKASHIC AGE
SHARING OUR CONNECTIONS
A new form of participatory consciousness has been emerging through our increased interconnectivity and global intercommunication. This is a distributed model that connects people horizontally in a more egalitarian way rather than through top-down structures. It catalyzes people into becoming more active through their participation. No longer do we have to remain the passive audience, as during the earlier communication revolutions of radio and television. The new model already with us is blogging, mobile phone text messaging, social networking, and engaging in similar forms of distributed social media. The dialogue is now shifting into a more active domain where people are putting themselves onstage and orchestrating their own connections, presence, and self-expression. At the dawn of the Akashic Age the civil body of the planet will really begin to grow and stretch its tentacles.
Social networks--both physical and virtual--have matured tremendously over recent years, with the list of global Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) growing longer, and stronger, with each passing year. These innovative networks are the forums for visionary thinkers, where new ideas and concepts can spread virally through the communications-based nervous system of the planet.
The new civil body joining the distributed contributions of individuals worldwide is set to become a major feature of an integrated planetary society. With talks being broadcast regularly online and through access to an array of innovative lectures and social forums, people can be actively influenced and alternative thinking and ideas can be stimulated. A more mature form of collective social intelligence can begin to emerge in various parts of the globe. Indeed, we envision that civil society, which is the largest movement in history, will grow to become more dominant and influential in transforming our societies. To belong to this diverse and yet unified family is not only a responsibility, it is also a blessing.
Externally we may seem to be a vast, distant, and separated collection of people, yet reality is just the opposite. The reality is that we form a dense, intimate, closely entwined species of various races, sharing a nonlocal sense of being. Younger generations of people worldwide are growing up with a new expression of consciousness. Younger people are increasingly more comfortable in expressing themselves with strangers, and many of them explore and express their inner thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas with hundreds of unknown persons online, from various cultural backgrounds. More and more daily interactions are empathic as people share news, stories, and emotional impacts from sources around the world.
Empathy is becoming one of the core values by which we create and sustain social life. Exposure to impacts outside of our own narrow environment will help us to achieve tolerance. We are living with experiences that are richer and more complex, full of ambiguities, multiple realities, and shared perceptions.
Trillions of online friendships have already been formed, and this trend is likely to increase. Every day online social networks create thousands of friendships even across conflicting religions and regions. The online worlds of social networking are often fueled by genuine empathy and a spirit of sharing. Around the world an hour of video is now uploaded every second; we are collectively generating more content than ever before in the history of civilization. The years ahead can foster these social networks into principal channels of communication whereby individuals can gain almost instant access to news occurring in other areas around the world, bypassing traditional modes of mainstream media news.
On August 4, 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that every two days we are now creating as much information “as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003” and that by 2013 that quantity of information will be created every ten minutes. Most of this is usergenerated content, material that people have created themselves and contributed to the world. It is estimated that more than 68 million users share content every day. As an example of the figures involved, more video is uploaded to YouTube every six months than was produced by the three major U.S. TV networks in the past 60 years.
What is emerging is an incredible global platform for sharing, in large part free of commercial goals. All of this makes for a stupendous platform for connecting ideas and content, with very little personal investment in skills and finance. This collaborative and participatory world of online content could become a global commons that reinforces a sense of local identity while connecting people in all parts of the globe. This outreach of connectivity has the power and the potential to break down old perceptual paradigms of duality--the “us” and “them”--that have been exploited by governments and ruling authorities to serve their own goals of control and conquest.
The younger generations are accustomed to sending and receiveing information in a way that could nourish local networks rather than replace them. This can stimulate increasing numbers of young people from many nations to become involved in community and social projects and with NGOs--for example, by taking a year out to help in another culture abroad, to learn and experience, and to offer assistance. The model that the Internet and other distributed communications represent is a bottom-up, horizontal medium for spreading awareness, information, and contact. It is horizontal in that it bypasses the old model of top-down, hierarchical control structures that have been so strongly in place in recent history. If it is to truly become an effective new model for the Akashic Age, this horizontal model of distributed connectivity needs to grow and develop beyond the virtual world into the physical world. It must be able to transform how we do things daily in our communities and immediate environments. The applications of the model need to cross-fertilize so that our technologies of global connectivity can enhance and enrich our lives, friendships, and connections.
