Collapsing degrees of separation – the social web as a leverage for sustainopreneurship

Posted on by September 24, 2009 by anders.abrahamsson

“The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.” – Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.

One of the strongest society-changing forces from recent time is the World Wide Web. And it seems, if we look upon it with wisdom and perspective, that it could be the most prominent source to create a sustainable world.
This medium is more than appropriate to leverage a collective wisdom and insight-sharing for sustainability. The phenomenon that emphasizes this dimension is defined as “social media”, with blogs, forums, virtual communities, wikis and websites defines and opens up for user-generated contents through self-organized conversation and sharing – as the intention of this website, Ideas For Change.

The online environment also easily allows other forms of media than text, all equally easy to syndicate and duplicate in different contexts, increasing the speed of diffusion and transfer to the various virtual places and empowered peer-to-peer conversation and conversion: pictures, graphics, video and audio are believed to have a higher degree of communicational efficiency and power – especially those techniques which utilize the visualization of complexities.

The result is an ongoing collapse of the degree of separation between individuals, teams, social networks and communities of practice, virtual as well as physical, with humans from all walks of life sharing intentions towards a sustainable world: an increase of the proximity and number of linkages between ideas, innovations, projects, businesses and organizations generated with the intention to find ways to how to sustain the biosphere and its inhabitants. It is anticipated that the “immaterial gravitational force” will increase in this process, with higher density created: A positive feedback loop is created, where more authentic sustainability business forces are attracted – sustainopreneurs.

“We need diversity of thought in the world to face the new challenges.” – Tim Berners-Lee, quoted again.

Still, the majority of the world is still ”unconnected”. In order to release the full force of the social web in the service of sustainability, we need to continue to decrease the part of the world that has not even seen a telephone. It used to be half of the world’s population, but is reducing faster now than ever with the introduction of the cellphone. Internet has the power to not just bridge the digital divide, but also cultural divides empowering global dialogues towards a changed world-view, e. g. more positive imaging of the developing parts of the world, at the same time as transfer of knowledge goes in both directions. So, “digital unification” is powering a cultural shift. It is of priority to put the information and communication tools in the hands of pupils, micro entrepreneurs, educators and doctors everywhere, giving power to their everydayness strives in the quest to improve life quality of their fellow citizens.

Together, we make the world smaller and more connected – and sustainopreneurs are there to make the shift and change.

/Anders Abrahamsson

Anders is a serial sustainopreneur and has been the driving force in the conceptual development of Sustainopreneurship, and published its Wikipedia article in 2008. He has published a number of publications on this topic, and is currently authoring a popular book on subject, one blog post at a time. Founder of SLICE Services and Publishing.