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(More customer reviews)Ralf Hirt's 8W8 Global Space Tribes goes beyond the concept of a flat
world, it draws the reader into a virtual "What if?" reality. What if
the Internet could be used to erase national borders and
ethno-cultural divides creating entirely new social systems... global
space tribes!
Taking a ride in Hirt's 8W8 Global Space Tribes' Helicopter is more
than experiencing the Web 3.0 envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee as "an
overlay of scalable vector graphics (with) everything rippling and
folding and looking misty:" it's entering a 5-D world where Time and
Space serve as connective tissue further compressing an already
flattened world.
Eschewing technical jargon that could alienate the average
non-techgeek, Hirt, instead, introduces the reader to 15 individuals
who call themselves the Golden Sky. They are an IT think tank composed
of international business people, lawyers, politicians,
environmentalists, a musician, a doctor and a philosopher, all of whom
share one thing in common--a futuristic vision of the future. They come
together on the Big Island of Hawaii, in the home of one of their
members, Winston Chee, an IT entrepreneur, for a week-long break out
in which they intend to focus on an IT conundrum: how to make the
invisible, visible.
The author cleverly uses the house, itself, as a living entity that,
in many ways, embodies many of the same elements as their quest.
Called EA-RA, it is a six-story mansion built into the side of a
mountain. It's exterior is a semicircular sheet of black glass infused
with golden fiber which faces south and stretches in a semicircle 180
degrees from east to west. The effect is that it not only catches the
sunrise but the setting sun as well, all the while reflecting the
sun's rays like a golden mirror. Unseen and undetected from outside is
the vast interior which encloses a self-sustaining environment
including a farm on its ground floor, the entire panoply and
requisites of a modern spa and convention center on the the five top
floors, all of which are hidden from view to the outside observer.
The hero of the piece is a San Francisco based IT journalist called
Oskar Kiernan Feller, or more commonly called by his friends, O.K.
Fellow. He is probably a manifestation of the author, himself,
conflicted and driven. It is O.K. Fellow whom we first meet as he sits
in an airplane flying from San Francisco to an IT conference in
Berlin. It is a trip he has made many times in the past, but on this
trip he is gripped with a sense of anxiety. He has flown millions of
miles without an incident, but his mind has made a calculation that at
some point there had to be a "statistical fluctuation" which might
result in...? He tries to stop thinking about it by repeating a mantra
silently to himself.
Ultimately, somewhere over St. Louis he experiences an existential
moment when he begins to question what he is seeing. That results in a
dialectical switch where, for a moment, he is watching himself trying
to find like-minded individuals among the houses and buildings below.
We are introduced to all the main characters in the first two
chapters. Except for their different vocations, they all share the
same uneasiness as O.K. Fellow. They want to see the unseen elements
of their world. For some, it's a search to find people as
themselves,for the others, it is to be able to see the actual flow of
elements into streams and rivers which make up what they call "Global
Space Tribes."
Eventually, they develop the concept of a virtual helicopter which
they imagine could hover above the earth with an instrument panel.
This tool could discern hidden values from single elements to
concentrations of elements, "mountains," as they eventually see them.
This is a fast and enjoyable read for both the lay reader as well as
the technophile.
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8W8 - Global Space Tribes: a post-modern journey through globalization in the internet age powered by the world modeling engine 8W88W8 - Global Space Tribes is a new way to see the world. It is written for everyone who uses the Internet, travels and is interested in any aspect of the world in the 21st century. The Golden Sky is a community comprised of 15 charismatic Internet activists from the worlds of business, finance, media, government, bio sciences, medicine, social and religious activists and environmentalists. They came together to meet on Hawaii in the fantastically beautiful mountain home, EA-RA, of the Chinese Internet billionaire, Winston Chee. There they develop a new world modeling engine, ultimately named, 8W8, which would find the invisible digital elements, i.e. the online population and digital activities, and render them visible to the world stake holding factors they define.Global Space Tribes are the Internet users The Golden Sky is able to identify with 8W8. They exist out of elements that come together in streams and interconnect with other streams around the world and can be visualized and volumized from the cockpit of the 8W8 world modeling engine, which The Golden Skyers dubbed the 8W8 Helicopter for the purpose of entering virtual rides. The pilot of the 8W8 Helicopter, albeit, an Internet user, a marketer, a traveler or political candidate or simply "You" of any background, could virtually ride over the flattened but fragmented world identifying subjectively or objectively new virtual structures, tracking the flow and concentrations of criteria such as: the presence or lack of wealth, trade, interconnectivity, beliefs, environmental conditions, peace record, happiness, and any other factors that are normally invisible for the naked eye. When BridgeMan, Winston's business partner from San Francisco, comes to EA-RA and learns about 8W8, he saw an immediate benefit for himself and the world in general. He extolled the concept as a way of making the invisibilities of the 21st century visible and of improving the state of the world...
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