Redistribution of wealth

Currently, the public uploads content to Facebook. Then, Mark Zuckerberg sells ads next to our content, and he keeps the profits. Just so, Google searches our online content, sells ads in those search results, and keeps the profits. Facebook and Google, with their advertising sales, have the most successful business strategy ever.

Lokkal is local internet, the Yellow Pages robustly reborn for the new millenium: an interactive, user-generated local directory; a non-commercial, non-profit, local communication platform.

Lokkal creates a local social network and a local search engine, in the public domain; applying the most successful business strategy on the local level, in the public interest: "Thank you, Big Tech, but we don't need your algorithm; we will present our own city to the planet."

Boots on the ground (Collective Human Intelligence), local curation, creates a better search engine locally than can Google remotely. Give me one or two local aficionados of mezcal, chocolate or jazz and I will give you a local database of mezcal, chocolate or jazz better than Google, with all of their money and AI. "Better than Google" sounds like a winner. (And Lokkal is so much more than just a local Facebook or Google.)

This project is extremely sustainable, economically and otherwise. The money is huge.

Economic permaculture

Agricultural permaculture: a) digs holes to catch the rain, b) creating pools of water rather than letting the rain flow away, c) allowing the water to permeate into the local water table, d) creating an oasis. Lokkal is economic permaculture: a) preventing local wealth (advertising dollars) from being extracted (by Facebook, Google, et al.), b) keeping the money flowing in the local economy, c) blessing another person (or group of people) every time it changes hands.

Permaculture's technology is simple: dig holes. Lokkal's concept is simple as well. In physics, formulas that are elegant, E=MC², are more likely to be true. Lokkal is elegant... and true.

Marx advised, "Seize the means of production." Ours is now an information economy. Lokkal advises us to "Seize the means of communication."

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Growing community

Microfinance, according to its founder, is limited mainly by the lack of available funding. Lokkal, operated as a public utility, invests or donates all profits in the community's interest. I am convinced that a tipping point happens when 4% of the local population, relieved of financial worries, is happier. That will usher in the singularity, a new collective consciousness.

Also, easier, more intuitive, more organic local communication (including local press) fosters community, in neighborhoods, towns and cities. Healthier local community is the answer to almost all of the problems facing society today.

Seeing the local, bricks and mortar community reflected online will "teach" community.

Localism, promoting local flavor, resists the flattening effects of globalism.

Organize!

A few dedicated activists can bring Lokkal to life in any neighborhood, town or city, especially with the assistance of their already screen-addicted children. (They'll be happy to help. They don't care what they are doing online; they just want to be online.) Note to activists, young and old: if you want to make the world a better place, organize your local community online.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

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The future

It's notoriously hard to see the future, but it seems obvious that the solution involves:

1) a healthier internet: fulfilling its original promise of egalitarian communication; more civil because it is moderated by local people
2) a redistribution of wealth

Lokkal does that simply and elegantly. It's as basic as digging holes to catch the rain.

Lokkal is meta-altruism. Creating an economic dynamo that floats all boats, it is voluntary socialism.

"El pueblo unido"

Lokkal is the people, the town united. It is the People's Internet. As part of my local elevator pitch, I often say, "Lokkal is the Zapatistas... online, and I am Subcomandante Marcos." Then I step forward as if I were blocking the way, with my hands placed as if I were carrying a rifle, and say, rather menacingly, "This is ours! You can't do that!"

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Team

I go to bed each night and wake each morning believing that, with Lokkal, I have the solution to the world's problems. (And in between, while I am asleep, I dream about it.) With that, I used to be amazed at my inability to convince others to join me in my efforts. I mean, how many people have a plan that might actually save the planet? Shouldn't we explore this possibility?

Now I understand that these days the common person is uncommon. Hypnotized by capitalist hyper-individuality, today the average person has no sense of the Commons, no sense of community. Lokkal is the Internet Commons.

Now I understand my inability to communicate this radically distinct vision. I need poets and idealists to participate in this most practical endeavor. I need those who deserve the merit of birthing a new world.

On one hand Lokkal is a wholly new dispensation. Collective Human Intelligence is a yet untapped, largely unfocused energy resource. Like using hydrogen as fuel, people don't understand: "How are you going to burn water?" On the other hand, Lokkal is the most basic integer, what has always worked, community. Lokkal is an ancestral innovation.

Practically

The practical way forward is clear: In each town we start with an event calendar. I have programs to help gather events, and AI can help a lot with this. But we need local people (or one dedicated, ambitious local person) in the know to curate the event calendar. People like to see what is going on. The concierges in San Miguel love Lokkal's event calendar.

Event calendar curators need to care about details and getting it right; being on the autistic spectrum might be a plus. I see these people as the son/daughter, niece/nephew, friend... of the director/editor; the director themselves being responsible for organizing the more creative/editorial/content-based aspects of the platform.

Todo para todos, everything for everyone... locally, Lokkal respects and promotes already existing local, community-oriented organizations.

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Around the world

Please, contact me to help, including starting Lokkal where you live.

Lokkal will replicate in towns and cities around the world, spreading in a grassroots, organic way. Start up financial backing, especially to publicize Lokkal in new towns and cities, will greatly facilitate this spread. Local advertising sponsorship will quickly make Lokkal completely self-sustaining in each town and city, limiting the amount of time that this start-up financial assistance is needed.

Some of you know people who, very concerned with the state of the world, are already giving financial aid to worthy causes. Please share this message with them.

Mission

- Events Newsletter (Friday)
- Magazine Newsletter (Sunday)
- Semana SMA Newsletter (Tuesday)

- Event Calendar
- Sunday Magazine
- Wall