The Utopian World Championship

Enmar & The Hawk .: Portal to the Future: The Internet and the Development of a Global Utopia

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Summary

A vision of a future society, of a unified, global unit, has been the goal and the dream of all cultures. It forms the comparison between all political concepts, for it is the vision of the form of the good writ large. It also exposes the heart of the problem we face when we try to dream our future – for our dreams are very different.

The future will not look like any of those monocultural dreams. It is going to be the result of an integration process between cultures and new ideas that will emerge with time. It is very hard for us to foresee the future because we are blinded by our present realities, by the restrictions of our moral structures, by our ties to our past through history and through languages. We can neither see through the eyes nor feel through the hearts of the future people - they will have different values and perspectives on things. It is enough to look at the radical changes of the twentieth century to see how much the global perspective has been altered.

The fact that we can not see the future does not release us from our responsibility to it, nor our stewardship over it. The way we conduct ourselves today determines the paths people will be able to choose from in the future. We may not be able to bridge the cultural and religious gaps among us, but we can take the first step in the right direction by acknowledging differing religious and cultural backgrounds not as 'others', but as being like ourselves.

The Internet presents us, for the first time in history, an opportunity to cross paths with people very different from us. In a way unforeseen in fiction or in history, we have the ability to see diversity and commonality in basic human drives and beliefs, to care about conflicts that take place thousands of kilometers away, and above all, to make genuine friends outside our limited offline community, with those people who are not so similar to us as those with whom we share our living space.

The Internet can help us make the first step on the journey to a global consciousness, but it will not come into existence unless we harness it expressly for the purpose of building diversity, understanding, and change through its digital means. The portals of the Internet are the first doors through which the global consciousness of utopia will pass. Without that passage, without that understanding in the spirit of our responsibility to the future, change on a global scale is impossible.

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Gender, status, age and other characteristics don’t just disappear, but the way we develop our considerations of them, and our judgments based upon them, are shaped by what we find online. Some things can not be clearly communicated through the Internet. When words are all we have, charisma and status take a turn. Those with their own style are the ones that shine. It’s the people that really read others’ words and remember them, the ones interested in listening and not only being heard, that will stand to gain the most from their time online. People with sound knowledge and who are capable of clear explanation stand the best chance of making that kind of impact. It isn’t enough simply to talk—one must want to be heard, and understood.

And the most important thing to watch is the success of the Internet itself. People feel lost in this world. The pressure of potential, the need to belong, to be accepted, to feel they are capable of good things – these needs weigh upon us all. The Internet instinctively fascinates us because it offers refuge from many things that are wrong or uncomfortable in this world. The Internet is more than a data base – it is a new combination of a personal yet mass communication. And it is that successful not because of marketing, but because what it offers is rooted in powerful human needs. In a world where depression and loneliness threatens to be the epidemics of this century, the Internet offers the beginning of a cure.

But, naturally, this is only one side of the story. The other is that the Internet is not an isolated oasis of tolerance, but a part of our reality. We do not check everything that we are when we enter that realm. Our beliefs, our superstitions, and the good or bad day we’re having at work-- all come with us when we go online. Even artificial online identities are just another part of us. Our online and offline identities can not be separated.

The Internet is both a new horizon and a mirror image of the old realities of our lives. It has no single dominant force, but a balance of powers controls its direction. Some of these forces do walk down the path towards global consciousness – building diversity, understanding, and communal support. Some reflect the problems of the old world – in the near monopoly of the big news agencies, in the way websites rush to use the newest available technology at the expense of less-developed users, and by provoking and engaging in intentionally malicious behavior. Some make use of the Internet to promote hate, abuse, violence and for fraudulent purposes.

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