• The principles
  • Interoperability -
  • Resilience -
  • Humanity - technology
  • Ecology - interconnectedness as in nature

Asia as a forestAsia has been affected deeply by ‘dark flows’ of nationalism, war, colonialism, environmental degredation etc. The rise of digital technologies and the Internet over the past few decades, while creating new ways of living and improved opportunities for people, has also exacerbated and further propagated some of these dark flows. Internet shutdowns, invasive censorship and surveillance regimes, dis/misinformation campaigns, online scams, violation of privacy, etc are several examples of problems that plague countries around the region. In addition to this, the impact of social media and the hyper online culture on youth in the region is yet to be fully understood.

Trees loosing rooting and grounding

Innovation healthy competition, not towards monoculture but towards more diversity

Trust as a base, lead us to abundance over scarcity

Deeply interconnected flows of people, money, ideas, music, food

India, China, Indigenous communities

diverse languages

interconnectivity is lost → accelerated Dark flows → unlimited expansion

Web today: Internet shutdowns, censorship, surveillance, dis/misinformation, scams, no data protection and privacy, ecological degradation, monopolist tech platforms.

interconnectivity is lost → accelerated Dark flows → unlimited expansion

Web today: Internet shutdowns, censorship, surveillance, dis/misinformation, scams, no data protection and privacy, ecological degradation, monopolist tech platforms.

The existing institutions in the region tasked with addressing these dark flow have either proven inadequate or are amplifiers of the problems.

• Several countries such as China, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, to name a few, have put into place a number of laws and regulations to govern digital spaces, particularly platforms. Adopting a more paternalistic and less Rights or process based approaches, these laws are resulting in increased government power and control and weakened digital rights (see internet shutdowns in India, Myanmar, etc., censorship regimes in China, Singapore, Thailand, etc). Nation state governments are primarily concerned solely with the effects in their own borders.
• Large technology giants such as Facebook, Tik Tok, and Google that straddle Asia function on a surveillance capitalist business model that from spread of hate speech online, mis/disinformation, weak data protection and privacy. Builders of technology i.e. tech companies, L1, L2s, etc. lack the expertise to understand the social impact of technology.
• NGOs and Civil Society organisation in Asia in particular have seen their role and power eroded significantly during this period. There is deep expertise and understanding of these issues however they lack the resources to be able to campaign on these issues. In many cases their sources of funding are from large technology giants resulting in capture. They attention and resources is still largely on “Web2” and therefore they are disconnected from the builders and changemakers in Web3 that are creating the “exchange” and “tech” layers that can bring about radical change required.

Sitting at this moment in time today how do we start to create a social layer that can help steward and support builders of technology and changemakers through this very thorny and difficult task of creating technology that helps bring about ‘light flows’ that improve the wellbeing of human beings and the ecology of the planet.