2013: Wishes and predictions

Here are my wishes and predictions for 2013. Have a wonderful New Year’s and may we make great progress in 2013.

Dying

Centralized media: Not just corporate media but also celebrity livestreamers and bloggers, collectives, leak platforms, book publishers, etc. Media now belongs to everyone, news will come from those it is happening to, every person will be a news outlet.

NGO’s: After centralized media, the next institutions to go should be NGO’s. Society’s challenges are for society to deal with directly. If people are in need of assistance, they can ask the world directly.

UN: See above. We can speak to each other now. In the future, epistemic communities, farmgate importing and shunning can replace UN sanctions and resolutions.

Intellectual Property: Credit must be given and compensated, but intellectual property rights must die. The sooner copyrights and patents are gone forever, the sooner we can get on with creation and health, knowledge and prosperity will be available to all.

Institutions: Officially designated institutions will eventually be replaced by open, transparent, idea and action driven systems.

Group affiliation: The root of all evil in society, the cause of wars, the justification for human rights violations. ‘Othering’ must end.

Immigration: See above. All people need the basic human right to move freely and live and work where they choose. People are not illegal.

Still here and growing

Anonymous: By any other name, Anonymous as an idea and a system of collaboration will continue to create new society.

Resource states vs corporations: Governance by user groups will take over governance by corporations, resource corporations will continue to be nationalized and then control will be fought for locally. Communities will reclaim their homes and agricultural land from corporations and states.

Twitter: for better or for worse, Twitter and other social media tools will become global society. We need to replace them with free, secure, p2p software now.

Celebrity: More powerful for more meaningless reasons than ever in history. We need to think of how to manage celebrity influence to not create a new strange oligarchy.

Paranoia and xenophobia: In all times of great change, many people panic, stockpile weapons and fear and loathe ‘others’. Hate has reached intolerable levels as we have already seen in the numbers of people happy to condone baby killng and torture.

Tolerance: will also reach unprecedented levels as we find the society we have been deprived of for so long and begin to communicate.

About to appear

Justice: Laws founded on principals for the benefit of society, consistent social contracts, and a consistent, unbiased, accessible system of enforcement.

Women: Anonymous since forever, photoshopped out of all history and current events, women have been behind revolution and change in every country in the past years. Decentralized media has given them a voice for the first time in history; this will make this revolution very different from all the ones in the past. ‘Women’s issues’ are about to become mainstream issues, women’s solutions will start to be heard over men with guns.

Makers: Every 20 years or so, people’s innate drive to create overcomes consumer advertising, and we are due for this cycle. Time to bring back free stores, hacklabs, neighbourhood commons gardens and more; this time let’s make it last and become the integral part of society it is meant to be.

Me the people: No representatives, no hive mind, we are ready to hear from the individuals.