Localism
A better local community and a stronger local economy are the solutions to most of the problems society faces. Top-down mandates from a centralized authority do not work as well as grassroots initiatives.
Multiple decentralized filters (Lokkal replicated in towns and cities around the world), resist monopolies, encouraging innovation, diversity and more equal income distribution.
(Jaron Lanier, the "Father of Virtual Reality," says that when you push everything through one filter you get a z-curve, a steeply peaked curve with very little room at the top. We see this with online music sales, where 5% of the musicians make 95% of the sales.)
Localism resists the flattening, narrowing, disempowering forces of globalism.
The solution must have a platform online, because that is where people's attention is. A new, radical technology, Lokkal is a grassroots revolution.
Lokkal is practical, effective social activism: if you want to make the world a better place, organize your neighborhood. The local community is the most natural political entity.
The problems we face may be very complicated, but their solutions might be very simple.
Healthy Internet
Lokkal is a calmer alternative to the razzle-dazzle of commercial internet. Think of it like public television or the public library or a public utility.
Like public television gave us a healthier, more uplifting television experience, Lokkal provides an edifying, non-commercial, non-toxic, non-addictive experience online. Commercial internet, serving the interests of share-holders', must maximize user-engagement, inevitably leading to user-addiction.
A huge percentage of the population, especially the young, spend a huge percentage of their day scrolling down the newsfeeds and walls of social media. Most don't really care what they do online. They just want to be online. Lokkal gives them healthier, community-based content to scroll through.
If society is to survive, in any form in which we would want to live in it, we need a healthier internet.
Economic Permaculture
Permaculture catches rain-water in trenches instead of letting it flow off the land. The water in these little pools seeps into the ground, raising the local water table, creating a micro-environment, turning dry land into an oasis. It may be that the underlying aquifer is depleted, but the local water table is full.
So Lokkal keeps wealth circulating locally, catching the money that would normally be syphoned off by external interests, extracted by global businesses.
Lokkal is economic permaculture. Lokkal's principal strategy is like water catchment, but for currency, wealth. Right now, the vast majority of money flows through, over and past the community. Lokkal catches that wealth, allowing it to permeate and percolate down, building up the community's economic water table, keeping the wealth circulating in the community, creating an economic dynamo.
Not only can we capture a large share of the advertising revenues now flowing to Facebook and Google, but we can make our own, non-extractive, local versions of Uber, Amazon, etc.
Like microfinance brings money to the little guy, Lokkal is micro-internet. Most people, individuals and small businesses, are being left behind by the internet as it is. Lokkal makes internet technology work for "most people."
Lokkal is the Buy Local movement online; like a farmers' market, but digital.
Based on their viewership, Lokkal rewards content providers for their content. You build the website, you get the profits. Based on your viewership, Lokkal will pay you to curate what interests you: shoes, jazz, animals, toddlers, art, ice cream, bicycling...
Community
Community institutions (religious affiliation, civic organizations, etc.) moderated the individualism that is associated with capitalism. Community institutions have weakened, resulting in today's hyper-indivdualism. We need a new antidote to all this hyper-individualism, to realize that we are all in this together.
Someone creates art that expresses their personal vision, and sells it; bravo. Someone publishes a book and other people read it; very good. Someone acquires a personal fortune; there is a magic to that. But after, in addition to, and beyond all that there is belonging, creating community
Building a house for someone, putting someone through university, feeding or paying someone's medical expenses are all noble. But these are all person to person, principally benefiting the recipient and his or her immediate family. Lokkal: Building Community, Strengthening the Local Economy, works on a different scale, works for everyone, floats all boats.
The problem is that society is being divided. The solution is to bring people together.
The most natural community is local. Lokkal is community.
When you organize the internet around a search algorithm, you get Google.
When you organize the internet around friends and family, you get Facebook.
When you organize the internet around neighborhoods and communities, you get better neighborhoods and communities, you get Lokkal.
Star Power
Out there in the vastness of space, gases aggregate, growing denser. Their increased gravity draws in more gases. At some point this cloud of gas becomes impossibly dense. That's when it goes plasma. A continuous, nuclear chain reaction is produced, and a star is born.
As Lokkal's community grows, it gains gravity and pulls more of the city into community. Then, at some wonderful moment, it goes stellar. A truer, more holistic way of thinking and experiencing is born.
A new technology is dawning. The internet, the world's brain, is still only a baby. Lokkal educates it.
Futurists wonder how we will ever stop society's race to the bottom, the incentive to cut corners, cheat, pollute and generally act in ways that give us short-term individual advantage at everyone else's expense. The obvious solution is to foster a communitarian point of view, to value and enjoy the rewards which accrue to the community.
Crowd-sourcing is a neglected resource, Collective Human Intelligence
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