http://realitysandwich.com/next_buddha_will_be_a_collective
“[D]istributed networks are becoming a dominant format of human technological and organizational frameworks. Think about the internet and the web as point to point or end to end networks. Think about the emerging micro media practices such as wiki’s and blogging, which allow many human agents to express themselves by bypassing former decentralized mass media…
Humanity has therefore a technology which has the fundamental effect of allowing the global coordination of small teams, which can now work on global projects based on affinity… [T]he over a billion already connected people are literally engaged in tens of thousands of such collective projects, which are producing all kinds of social value. The alterglobalization movement is one expression of a movement born out of such networks, which can globally organize and mobilize without access to the decentralized mass media, using a wide variety of micro media resources…
[W]e have here a mode of production and governance which can be applied to every human domain, and this is a radical advance in terms of participation. It is now possible to have self-governed communities… in the construction of collective spiritual knowledge…
This new vision of connectedness gives rise not to a generalized altruism, but to a vision that social systems have to be designed so that personal interest can converge with collective interests, and these principles are in turn embedded in the new generation of social software and social networks. Cooperative individualism seems an apt description of this new mentality, which is most pervasive in the newest generation of young adults, the so-called digital natives or Millenial Generation (those who became 20 in the year 2,000 and after, who grew up with the internet and collective gaming, and for whom sharing is said to be a default state). …
Cyberspace itself is fully embodied in the dynamic relation between humans and the planetary network of computers; it is a space generated by interconnectedness; it is premised on the full and unfettered mutuality of sharing information; it is an unlimited space for the expression of autonomous creativity; and its provides access for all to a vast range of multidimensional meanings.
It is in this sense that I call the internet, i.e. cyberspace, a global integral-spiritual commons. It has the properties and potential of an integral-spiritual space. The fact that such a space can be used for vulgar or corrupt purposes does not, in my view, detract from its inherent integral-spiritual status, in the same way that the spiritual status of free will is not in any way undermined by the abuse of free will. It is precisely that continuity of status, whatever we do with the gift, that sooner or later calls us to a liberating and creative use of the gift.”