I think it's fair to say that the
history of
civilization is defined by periods in
which
we humans thought we had a pretty good
handle on what was going on
punctuated by brief moments in which
we realize we really didn't have a clue.
And I think we're at one of those
moments now.
And I think it has to do with the
Internet and scale. In the
1960s
physicists thought they had a pretty
good idea of what the universe was
made of.
But in 1967 American astronomer Vera
Rubin
was studying the rotational speed of the
Andromeda Galaxy.
And she realized that the outermost
planets and suns in that galaxy,
the stars, were rotating way too fast for
what she calculated the mass of the
galaxy to be.
Doing an experiment on the
Triangulum galaxy, which is 400 million
billion [kilometers] across. She
calculated
that the outermost stars and planets
were moving so quickly that
it was as if there were 39 billion
missing suns in the galaxy - -
- - so much mass that couldn't be seen
or detected: Where was it? Well, Vera Rubin
had discovered dark matter and it's now
believed that
dark matter - - matter which doesn't
reflect or emit
light or radiation - - now makes up most of
the mass
of the universe. And I think the Internet
now
constitutes a kind of dark matter. It has a
force,
and a mass, and a capability to it that
often can't be seen or detected
by traditional kinds of business and
organizations
working in traditional ways. I think that
dark matter is mostly social,
open, collaborative, participatory,
its peer-to-peer and read/write, and its
right there in front of us.
The TED conference served its one billionth
video last year. Kickstarter
gave away its one billionth dollar
to start new creative projects. Wikipedia - -
the Wikimedia projects had their two
billion
edit. And Reddit it routinely - -
month-after-month - -  serves over 100
million
unique users and over
5 billion page views. That's a lot of mass
there.
And if you look objectively at the
way that most
organizations and institutions try to
accomplish their goals now
you couldn't help but conclude that
they're not
seeing this dark matter - -
this open, social, participatory
web.
I know that Janus is going to ask you
all to think
big thoughts over the next couple days - -  that's what he does - -
and I want you to think as
big thoughts as you can think, because
I think that all of the outcomes you are
seeking - -  in your business life and your
personal life...
in your education, what you want for
your customers,
what you want for each other, comes down
to how well you're going to recognize
and use
the dark matter of the Internet.
And I'll leave you with one final story.
I recently met a young woman
who owned a social media marketing
firm
that specialized in helping
environmental organizations to succeed.
And I think this woman has an intrinsic
understanding
the participatory, open web.
And she was pitching projects to these
organizations, her clients,
to get them to rally effort and
community action towards
the goals of the environmental
organizations, and one of her
clients stopped her and said,
no-no-no-no: we don't want any that stuff...
we just want you to build apps and web
pages so that people can give us money,
and we'll just keep doing the stuff
we've always been doing.
So this young woman fired her clients
and ask yourself this question: what
would I do
if the environment itself was my client?
How could I best serve the environment
itself? Not through working with
traditional organizations or
institutions - -
but I think by utilizing the dark matter
up the Internet. And I think that's the
question
you need to ask yourselves over the next
few days:
how does that open, collaborative,
participatory,
social web help you get your jobs done - -
help you build a better world.
So have a great conference, and I'll see y'all
around.
