Explaining eSamudaay.com - Decentralization, Democratization

In the first article in the series "Explaining eSamudaay.com", I wrote about the existence of a "Infosphere" which is just as real as the Biosphere. "Explaining eSamudaay - Infosphere"

I think I don't need to argue or make a case to state that it is a well known fact that the Infosphere today is monopolized by the Global Digital Platforms. This is quite similar to the situation depicted in Futurama.

I won't even extrapolate the dangers of the growing influence and power wielded by the Global Digital Platforms. My travels in the USA during the 2016 election brought home this fact loud and clear for me and my family.

The benefits of Information Processing are also clear. Rapid dissemnination of Knowledge has the potential to raise humanity to greater heights and erase approximately 10,000 years of inequalities created by power structures rooted in the threat of violence and social sanction for the "different and diffident".

So, the purpose of this article will be to make a case for why "Democratizing Digital" is not just a cause we need to take up at the Society level, but, also an opportunity for a civilizational change from the politics and economics of Scarcity leading to greed and jealousy to the politics and economics of Abundance leading to contentment and advancement of understanding. This is what we call the Distributed Digital Economy.

To begin this article, I will quote Gandhi's famous quote on Decentralization from Hind Swaraj which he wrote on his way to India from South Africa.

The most effective organization of Social, Economic and Political functions must follow the natural contours of the neighbourhood - MK Gandhi

Gandhi wrote this when he had personally both benefitted from as well as felt the pain of discrimination that the top-down, threat of violence based political establishment implemented by the Aristocracy who ruled Earth with an iron fist for over 4000 years. This was the truth for most parts of the Earth for most of recorded history including the systems implemented by the European Aristocracy expanding to the colonies. Apartheid was the most visible and brutal form because it was based on visual cues (skin color). But, systems such as these have been in place across the world which seek to perpetuate the power and control of the few over the many (Aristocracy, Autocracy etc.)

I hope at this point in the artcle, I have succeeded in establishing that a Infosphere exists, it is monopolized/colonized by the Global Digital Platforms and that Gandhi's methods of countering physical colonialism can be applied to the countering of digital colonialism.

To do that, let's first define "neighbourhood" in the Infosphere since it's obvious this is not geographical. To do this, we will start with the Individual and lets call him the "Man on the spot". To traverse through life (a space-time journey through the Biosphere guided by the Infosphere), "Man on the spot" needs to make choices and decisions. How does he go about doing this? A quote from a paper "The use of knowledge in society" by Austrian economist Friedrich Von Hayek is useful in understanding this process which most of us "clued in" to the Internet from before the colonisation began will understand.

“Man on the spot" cannot decide solely based on his limited but intimate knowledge of the facts of his immediate surroundings. There remains the problem of communicating to him such further information as he needs to fit his decisions into the whole pattern of changes of the larger economic system.

The problem unfortunately is that while the Internet was a utopian place where people shared to improve collective understanding, it is today a place where we have shucksters of all types peddling lies and half-truths (more dangerous than lies). And the algorithms have only one goal - Increase eyeballs on screens and they are doing a fabulous job. Of course, when the colonization started around 1998, they were quite open about their goal to increase "Eyeballs". It's only later when we had the boy prince Mark Zuckerburg saying that he is "Connecting the world and making the world a better place" that the real goals and methods are hidden from the "users".

So, the neighbourhood on the Infosphere for "Man on the spot" is what we will term a "Infobubble" which is a curated set of information which "Man on the spot" trusts to make his decisions. The "Infobubble" is different based on the location of the "Man on the spot" in Spacetime. So, the Infobubble which he uses in office will be different from the Infobubble he uses at the bar. A process which we will depict in the picture below. What is not depicted in this picture is the process of converting Information into Knowledge. A process which is essentially K-I-K (Knowledge creates Information which creates more refined Knowledge and so on).

So, the neighbourhood in the case of the Digital World aka Infosphere is the Information which the "Man on the spot" uses to make rational decisions. So, in a Internet which is drowning in Information, but, starved on Knowledge, how do we go about decolonizing? This is where changemakers come in. In the Digital World, these are Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are the key actors in bringing about Digital Swaraj.

Entrepreneurs and economy are deeply connected. They need each other. Just think of profits, prices, uncertainty, opportunity. All these are key to entrepreneurs, and key to the economy.?And that is why eSamudaay.com is focussed on building a DIY toolkit for Entrepreneurs and integrating into networks such as Angelwise.in and others who believe that the Infosphere needs to be decolonized for the human civilization to go to the next level. Because clearly, the economic model which we have idolized for the past few centuries is rooted in Aristocracy and to be truly democratic and distributed, you need to be decentralized. ONDC and Open Networks are the way through which Gandhi's vision of a Khadi mentality can truly find manifestation on the Digital Economy.

I will end this article with a quote I heard recently which I have started liking. It is also from the Austrian school of Economics from an economist named Israel Kirzner.

The inefficiency of today is the profit of tomorrow

The biggest inefficiency today is the transmission and distribution of wealth (including the wealth of knowledge) throughout society. And that is what Nirmund Digital Distributions P Ltd (company that founded the eSamudaay.com Network) aims to do by "Democratizing Digital".

In the next and last article in this series "Explaining eSamudaay.com", I will focus on the implementation of these concepts in India and why India 2022 is the right place to bring about #DigitalSwaraj.