Venessa Miemis has written a insightful meditation on what is going on in the world, where multiple transitions seemed to intersect. It reflects Venissa’s own learning curve and pattern recognition abilities and I recommend to read it in full. You have to read it in full to understand why the conclusion, “it all starts and ends with networks”, is not trite, but a profound insight. It’s really why we are doing what we are doing with the P2P Foundation, not because we know the answer, but because we want to collectively create it and make it emerge.

Here’s just a quote about how we go about changing the world.

“This whole online thing is essentially a simulation – it mimics the actual world. The relationships you build online and the networks you build online aren’t just made between screennames and avatars, they’re with real life people.

Turns out, we’re all actually in this together, all trying to figure out a way that we can all utilize our strengths, connect, collaborate, and survive. If helping each other and building trust is the way to make it work, let’s make it work.

All this time, I was thinking way too big, trying to understand how to change the world. I kept asking myself, “but how do we leverage networks?”

We don’t.

We ARE the network. Networks self-organize. We only have to leverage ourselves, and the infrastructure gets built.

Each one of us has to create our own ecosystem of relationships that will be beneficial to us personally. We’ll all have some relationships that overlap, but none of us will have the exact same set. The point is that we want to build trust so that when we need help we know who we can access to help us.

Now imagine, if you’re a entrepreneur, or an organization, or a non-profit, or a corporation, and you understand this message and spread it to each and every one of your employees. What happens when your entire organization of people, as a unit, is a network in itself, but each person also has their personal networks of relationships to draw on, which extend beyond the organization?

You then have an INCREDIBLE competitive advantage. (Yeah, there can still be ‘competition’ in a collaborative society, it’s just different, because it’s based on trust.)

Your organization becomes agile. It becomes a learning network, where every person has access to information that can be shared, interpreted, and implemented. You’ll be able to identify weak signals faster, come up with solutions faster, and adapt to change faster.

The world will keep moving. It’s accelerating at an accelerating rate. The ONLY WAY to deal with it is not to cling to the old hierarchies and silos and pride and egos. We have to understand that we can only deal with this as a fully connected system.

And the really crazy part is: we already have everything we need to make this happen. It’s already in place.

All that needs to change is the mindset.

Let me repeat:

All that needs to change is the mindset.

So how are we going to fix everything?

I have absolutely no idea. That’s kind of the point. None of us do, individually, or even as groups. The system needs to be interwoven first, and then we’ll collectively know how to figure it out. We’ll be flexible, adaptive, and intelligent, because we’ll be able to quickly and freely allocate resources where they’re needed in order to make change.

The first step is to build our networks.

This all hit me like a bolt of lightening, a pattern that emerged out of all the complex information.

It’s an option that seems not only possible, but preferable, and comes with a plan that’s implementable immediately.

I thought that made this an idea worth spreading.

If you think so too, pass it on.”