Our garden is on fire: let's Smartup!

When I think of the Internet I feel like we've played around with it long enough. Let's think about it like adults. We've had our fill of pimply young teenagers with half-baked ideas. They morphed into spoiled billionaires with delusions who launched all of our technology into space, both literally and figuratively. The startup era is coming to a close. Adolescence is over. A climate emergency, a pandemic, and an impending third-world war are ample reasons for us to collectively decide that we've had enough of founders of reckless, consumption-driven applications that occupy billions of minds with millions of wrong ideas. The toddlers among us have had their way. The cuteness is over. The garden is on fire. Let's get down to business. Let's Smartup.

A Smartup is not about realizing "it." Or inventing "it". Or solving "it." Simply put, the Smartup hypothesis explores how we can get busy making the tools with which our children and grandchildren can get busy realizing "it." We can't solve the climate crisis. Not from our current system. We need to make adjustments first. We need to set those adjustments in motion. That's what we can give to our children: a very good exit strategy. And no, that exit strategy doesn't take place on Mars because we simply don't have enough time. Everything we know and can do must be deployed for a cultural shift here on earth. We need to move to an alternative society. Because if we can prevent a third world war, an even greater war awaits us that we don't stand a chance of winning in our current state. We need to reorganize ourselves and change our systems. Not by smashing them but by redesigning them. Since we don't want to paint the same picture, this time we start with a different type of brush. These new brushes are made in Smartups. These are companies where you work on new digital tools that enable people to contribute to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It's about making a new toolkit for our kids. They'll have to build a new world from the mess we've made. At the very least, we can provide them with the right broom and dustpan. You know, we have one mother, Earth, who offers us the most unbelievably unique life and, as enjoying toddlers, our behavior is pushing her to the brink of feverish despair. She's seething with anger, trembling with hopelessness, and cursing with diseases. She could be fed up with us at any moment, mentally ready to put us up for adoption to another planet. Now that we're measuring, knowing, and experiencing our ecological crisis at first-hand, the call for some sort of big reset has become deafening, resonating globally among thousands of communities. I'm not suicidal either, so I'm all for big system change. However, I propose that before we hit that reset button, we should first redesign our 'motherboard,' or else we risk rebooting the same problem.

For my research, I explored the Smartup Hypothesis and set up experiments for it. The central idea is that we need to redefine an essential part of our socio-technical system that governs how people relate to their world through digital technology. This translates into the question of how we can equip ourselves with different tools than we currently possess to face the complex challenges from our own communities. If we, the human race struggling for survival as a species, want to have control to course-correct, we must take over the domain of digital technology. The democratization of digital technology begins with changing the conditions under which technology is created. If we create technology in the same way we've done the last 30 years, we embed the same core problem: whoever has the most money calls the shots. To prevent that, we need to rewrite the script. Quite literally as a matter of fact, since we find ourselves in a digital world, we can initially focus on redesigning the operating systems of the most powerful, addictive, and widespread tool in the world: the smartphone. When we, as individuals, take hold of this device that has 'suddenly' extended us evolutionarily, we break free. In the hands of the people, beyond the reach of companies and governments, it can become our steering wheel for self-course correction. As tempting and distracting as this technology makes us as individuals now, it can support the collective effort we all need to make together.

To begin, we focus on the networking function of this device. With our app Onlive, I propose building our own communication network. A network that is genuinely of the people and managed by the people, working everywhere and anytime without the need for servers, databases, or satellites. A network that allows us to organize ourselves in a different way, focusing on connecting groups of people in the physical world, rather than with individuals who can be anywhere in the world. It's a network that consists of us, citizens in our cities, and the technology we carry in our pockets to the moments when we are at our best: together in the real world. The world we need to change. Together, we can design a culture that restores, protects, and strengthens our relationship with nature.

The core strength of new tools like Onlive is that they are collectively owned by a group of people who jointly operate, build, and maintain the tool. No shareholders, corporations, or government - just tools by the people, for the people: democratic technology. Commercial or political interests play no role in the origin and existence of the tool. Since people are at their best in groups when solving complex problems, the only interest the tool has is in supporting one or more human group processes. These tools support communities in being better for their environment, and their place in nature. They help when we need to collaborate, live, care, experience, govern, or make any of those other decisions together much better. Decisions for our mother, who lies sick in bed with a fever. And yes, we made her sick. We are the virus. And yes, a virus can mutate if there is reason enough.