SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 2 and 3 billion years ago, what scientists call the Great Oxidation Event, or GOE, took place, causing the mass extinction of anaerobic bacteria, the dominant life form at the time. A new type of bacteria, cyanobacteria, had emerged, and it had the photosynthetic ability to produce glucose and oxygen out of carbon dioxide and water using the power of the sun. Oxygen was toxic to many anaerobic cousins, and most of them died off. In addition to being a massive extinction event, the oxygenation of the planet kicked off the evolution of multicellular organisms (620 to 550 million years ago), the Cambrian explosion of new species (540 million years ago), and an ice age that triggered the end of the dinosaurs and many cold-blooded species, leading to the emergence of the mammals as the apex group (66 million years ago) and eventually resulting in the appearance of Homo sapiens, with all of their social sophistication and complexity (315,000 years ago).
I’ve been thinking about the GOE, the Cambrian Explosion, and the emergence of the mammals a lot lately, because I’m pretty sure we’re in the midst of a similarly disruptive and pivotal moment in history that I’m calling the Great Digitization Event, or GDE. And right now we’re in that period where the oxygen, or in this case the internet as used today, is rapidly and indifferently killing off many systems while allowing new types of organizations to emerge.
.. Just as in the Great Oxidation Event, in which early organisms that created the conditions for the explosion of diversity had to die out or find a new home in the mud on the ocean floor, the early cohort that set off the digital explosion is giving way to a new, more robust form of life.
.. FROM THE OUTSET, members of that movement embraced nascent technological change. Stewart Brand, one of the Merry Pranksters, began publishing the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968, which spawned a collection of other publications that promoted a vision of society that was ecologically sound and socially just. The Whole Earth Catalog gave birth to one of the first online communities, the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, or WELL, in 1985.