The Next Wave:

Social Networking “Beyond the Face”

The emerging global consciousness and its implications
for deep human interaction in the digital age.

Kern Beare
Executive Director
Global MindShift Foundation
www.globalmindshift.com
© 2008
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Evidence of a Shift in Global Consciousness

“…we have concluded that a new global culture and consciousness have
taken root….This represents a shift in consciousness as distinct and
momentous as that which occurred in the transition from the agricultural
era to the industrial era roughly three hundred years ago.”
Duane Elgin
Global Consciousness Change:
Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm

“These dilemmas of environment and globalization and conflict are going

to reach crisis proportions by 2030…but the power to resolve these
existential issues is going to appear at roughly that same time. The
increase in knowledge, the awareness of the need for a shift in global
consciousness, the high technology -- all that…will be in place.”
William Halal
Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and Innovation
George Washington University

“This apostle of all things digital is the first to admit that technology
alone will not reverse the damage done. He says it is going to take ‘a shift
in consciousness.’”
Bono
Writing about Vice President Al Gore,
Time magazine’s runner-up for Person of the Year, 2007

“Generation i is less about control and empowerment and more about

communal connectedness and consciousness. It is about extraordinary
collective achievement by virtue of the contributions of ordinary
individuals. And its corollary is equally true: The ordinary individual is
able to realize extraordinary aspirations by virtue of the collective.”
Joseph Jaffe
Management Consultant and Author
Join the Conversation

“There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead,

it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the
people” in a global social movement….This movement has a surprisingly
agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests
with world society as a whole—and who recognize that at a fundamental
level we are all one.”
Dr. James F. Moore, Former Senior Fellow
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

© 2009, Kern Beare/Executive Director/Global MindShift Foundation/www.globalmindshift.com 2

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The Hidden Current: A Shift Toward Global Consciousness

“The role of the forecaster in the real world is quite different from that of the
mythical seer. Prediction is concerned with future certainty; forecasting looks at
how hidden currents in the present signal possible changes in direction for
companies, societies, or the world at large....Above all, the forecaster’s task is to
map uncertainty, for in a world where our actions in the present influence the
future, uncertainty is opportunity.”
Paul Saffo, Technology Forecaster
Harvard Business Review, July/August 2006

For the past three years, Global MindShift™, a non-partisan, non-denominational public
benefit foundation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, has been investigating the
emergence of a new and increasingly powerful shift in global consciousness. Based on
research and our own hands-on experience at www.global-mindshift.org, we believe this
shift has the potential to expand and redefine the social networking environment and
drive the next major wave of its adoption.

The shift

The global shift in consciousness that we see emerging can best be understood by the
following three, inter-related trends:

1. A growing awareness of the global threats to human survival – environmental and

social;
2. An emerging recognition of the imperative to engage in meaningful and authentic
interaction with other people on a global scale, even (or especially) with those
who might be regarded as adversaries;
3. The sudden and expanded rise of a global, grass-roots movement of organizations
working to help build a better world.

Together, these trends are indicative of a global shift in consciousness or way of thinking
– equal in import and impact to such previous shifts as realizing our planet is round and
not flat; that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around; and that, at
the scale of the very small, Newtonian must give way to Quantum mechanics.

As history has shown, each of these major shifts in thinking has been the precursor to
entirely new ways of being and acting in the world – individually and collectively.
Consequently, anticipating such shifts – and understanding their implications and
potential – can yield tremendous advantage and opportunity.

© 2009, Kern Beare/Executive Director/Global MindShift Foundation/www.globalmindshift.com 3

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Trend #1: A widespread awareness of the global threats to human survival –

environmental and social

“Although human societies have confronted major problems throughout history,

the challenges of our era are unique in one crucial respect -- they now embrace
the entire Earth as a whole system.”
Duane Elgin
Global Consciousness Change:
Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm

In the last several years there has been a surge in awareness of the various threats to
humanity’s collective future. On the environmental front, one example in particular
makes the point: When Al Gore wrote Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human
Spirit in the year 2000, he was ridiculed by the mainstream media and told by pundits
that his political career was over. Seven years later, An Inconvenient Truth is released to a
global audience, and Al Gore becomes the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the winner
of an Academy Award for Best Documentary, and the target of a grassroots campaign to
draft him for President of the United States in 2008.

But it’s not just about global warming. Other threats are also gaining increased mindshare
among the world’s people, notably the rise in terrorism, and its increasingly difficult-to-
deny relationship to global economic imbalances, growing resource scarcity, and the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Today, few people doubt the reality or the severity of our environmental, geo-political
and social challenges, or fail to see their global and interdependent nature.

This first trend is for many a wake-up call: The fate of all the world’s people have
become completely entwined.

Trend #2: An emerging recognition of the imperative to engage in meaningful and

authentic interaction with other people on a global scale, even (or especially) with those
who might be regarded as adversaries.

“Conversation…is perhaps the core human skill for dealing with the tremendous
challenges we face….If we combine conversations that really matter with the
interactive reach of the Internet, we have a powerful force for change from the
ground up.”
Institute for the Future
In Good Company: Innovation at the
Intersection of Technology and Sustainability.

Motivated by a growing awareness of our many impending global crises, and supported
by the emergence of global communication technologies, we humans are just beginning
to connect and converse with each other at a scale and depth unprecedented in human
history.

Evidence for this deeper, more meaningful conversation can be found in the burgeoning

© 2009, Kern Beare/Executive Director/Global MindShift Foundation/www.globalmindshift.com 4

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number of websites and online forums dedicated to public dialogue on issues relevant to
our collective future. Initially such conversations targeted and attracted people of like
mind. Today they are expanding to embrace those with potentially adversarial viewpoints,
as we recognize that what we have in common transcends our many differences. One
recent example of such a dialogue is this online campaign sponsored by the Chevy
division of General Motors:
`

The headline sets the over-arching context, calling attention to what we all have in
common: Our planet. The body copy then begins by saying, “At General Motors, we take
our responsibility for the environment seriously. If that sounds disingenuous coming from
the world’s largest producer of cars and trucks, well, maybe its time to talk – in depth and
frankly.”

By clicking on the link, “enter site,” people are invited to share their views and pose
questions on issues relating to fuel technology and the global environment. While the
skeptics among us may see this as more PR ploy than genuine dialogue, it is nevertheless
indicative of the emerging trend to connect with each other in substantive and authentic
ways, even when we may not like what we hear.

© 2009, Kern Beare/Executive Director/Global MindShift Foundation/www.globalmindshift.com 5

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Building connections, making a difference

In his recent book, Join the Conversation, marketing consultant Joseph Jaffe identifies
several key drivers behind “the rise of consumer-generated content, social media, and
social networking.” Two of the most important drivers, he says, are “building
connections” and “making a difference.”

“Building connections,” Jaffe says, is about establishing “meaningful bonds” between

people and is “the language of conversation.”

“Making a Difference,” according to Jaffe, is the desire to “change the world, to have an
impact on the life of another person.” Because these drivers are so strong, Jaffe believes
that we “are about to witness an extraordinary age of social awareness and activism.”

In truth, that extraordinary age is already upon us, as evidenced by our third and last
trend.

Trend #3: The rise of a global, grass-roots movement of organizations working to help
build a better world

Paul Hawken, in his book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement In the World
Came Into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming, calls our attention to the tens of
thousands of organizations around the world, large and small, working to address the
many environmental and social challenges that confront humanity.

According to Hawken’s website, “these groups collectively comprise the largest

movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location, and that has gone
largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the
bottom up, in every city, town, and culture.”

While large in number, the movement is organizationally immature, lacking the necessary
infrastructure for cooperation and collaboration -- badly needed if it is to maximize its
effectiveness in the world. But before a movement can be organized, it needs to exist –
and exist it does.

The situation is not unlike America’s manufacturing capacity prior to entering World War
II, which at the time was disjointed, unaligned and operating far below capacity. Once
brought together in a common cause and with the needed business infrastructure and
discipline, the U.S. became the most productive war machine on the planet.

Today, we need to answer the call not in support of a global war, but in support of a
global consciousness.

© 2009, Kern Beare/Executive Director/Global MindShift Foundation/www.globalmindshift.com 6

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Implications for the Future of Social Networking

“Surveys suggest that at least 30 million people in the United States identify
themselves [as part of a global social movement]—approximately 10% of the
US population. The percentage in Europe is undoubtedly higher. The global
membership in Asia, South America, Africa and India, while much lower in
percentage of the total population, is growing quickly….”

Dr. James F. Moore,

Former Senior Fellow
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School

The three trends we have described – which together indicate a rapidly emerging shift in
global consciousness – open up many new and significant opportunities for social
networking companies. Not just to grow their membership – but also to do so in a way
that makes a significant contribution to the well-being of all life.

These opportunities fall into two primary and interrelated areas:

1. Promoting awareness and community by supporting more meaningful

connections and conversations.
2. Helping individuals and organizations become more effective in making a
positive impact in the world.

More Than Face Deep: Supporting More Meaningful Connections and Conversations

“We are meaning-seeking creatures and, unlike other animals, fall very
easily into despair if we cannot find significance and value in our lives.”

Karen Armstrong, Author

The Great Transformation

In a January 19, 2008 article in the New York Times, Dan Mitchel wrote that third party
applications on social networking sites “mainly fall into two categories: the silly, and the
annoying (and sometimes both).”

Silly or not, many of the applications are a big hit with the younger demographic. But for
those who are part of the swelling wave of a global shift in consciousness, the
lightweight, sometimes frivolous engagement these applications promote is
unsatisfactory.

From the home page, to the personal profile page, to applications and widgets, the goal
should be to inspire and enable deeper, more meaningful connections among human
beings all over the world, satisfying the end user while addressing the need for global
community.

One example of an application area ripe for further development is the interface to

© 2009, Kern Beare/Executive Director/Global MindShift Foundation/www.globalmindshift.com 7

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support meaningful online conversations. Chat rooms, bulletin boards and comment
boxes, which today dominate the web environment, are destined to become primitive
precursors to far more powerful, integrated sharing and conversation tools that can help
people move “beyond the chat” and into sustained, deep dialogue on issues that matter.

Moving “beyond the chat” also means catalyzing shared understanding into a meaningful
change in behavior. In “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without
Organizations,” Clay Shirky writes, “Information sharing produces shared awareness
among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but
collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user’s identity to the identity
of the group.” Social networking sites are just beginning to explore the ways in which
they can leverage potent social motivators to accelerate the pace of personal behavior
change and promote collective action.

Note Just My Space, But Yours, Too:

Helping individuals and organizations become more effective in changing the world

Customer commitment in terms of time and loyalty will gain even more strength to the
degree that social networking applications provide not only personal benefit, but social
benefit as well.

As Chip and Dan Health point out in their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive
and Others Die, companies that offer products and services that speak only to their
customers’ narrow self interests are ignoring another, potentially more powerful
motivator: the desire to help others. As the Heath brothers put it, it is important to build
relationships with customers that appeal “not only to the people they are right now, but
also to the people they would like to be.”

In this area, Social Networking sites are sitting on a potential gold mind if they can create
applications that serve the tens of thousands of non-profit organizations working to build
a better world. One of the major issues facing these organizations is the lack of
connection between them, and the absence of effective tools for collaborating and sharing
information and resources, as well as lack of visibility among the general population.

By offering the right tools, these organizations – and the millions of people who are part
of them -- could be rapidly brought into the social networking environment, enhancing
their effectiveness while providing a rapidly growing source of new site users.

Riding the Wave

The number of people waking up to a global consciousness promises to grow, especially

as the reality of our interconnectedness penetrates ever more deeply into our personal,
daily lives. Social Networking sites are in an ideal position to both serve and accelerate
this shift in consciousness, making it easier for users to expand their awareness, connect
with others, and become effective agents of change.

© 2009, Kern Beare/Executive Director/Global MindShift Foundation/www.globalmindshift.com 8

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Furthermore, this shift is comprised of the demographics that offer a significant path of
growth, as it is people in the 34-54 age range that are currently leading this shift in
consciousness. This is no accident. It is when people reach mid-life that they begin to turn
their attention to the larger world outside themselves, and look for ways to make more
meaningful, long-lasting contributions to the world.

This is not to discount the role of the youth in this shift. They are growing up with a
consciousness of our interdependent world that no previous generation has ever had. As
such, we would expect them to respond positively to the same or similar set of tools. In
this way, social networking sites can provide a path and a motivation for users to stay
engaged with the site as they move through life’s various stages of development.

An invitation for further exploration

In this white paper, we have described an emerging shift in global consciousness and its
potential implications for the future of social networking.

The shift we have described is characterized by a growing realization of humankind’s

extraordinary challenges, and of the imperative for people around the planet to share, talk
and work together to address those challenges. We’ve also shown some of the ways social
networking companies can capitalize on and support this shift.

While the technical infrastructure to enable people to connect on a global scale is already
in place, additional tools and applications are needed to move connection to meaningful
conversation and action. Therein lies an extraordinary opportunity for companies with
sufficient social conscience and business vision.

To explore further what we at Global MindShift have learned about this emerging shift in
thinking and how social networking technology can be employed to support and
capitalize on it, we welcome further dialogue.

© 2009, Kern Beare/Executive Director/Global MindShift Foundation/www.globalmindshift.com 9