How about we build a new one, eh?

Von Ali Jelveh. Veröffentlicht 3. August 2010.

Approximately two years ago (actually, it was around 10pm on a tuesday night in august 2008 ;)) I had one of those discussions: sitting at a big round table in our flat-share we talked about religion, science, internet and of course: freedom. I can’t exactly remember the content of those – quite heated – discussions, but I remember that at some point, I started talking about how the infrastructure should belong to the people and that:

as long as we’re dependent on big corporations, governments and those friendly NGOs to provide us with the ability to communicate with each other, we’re at their mercy.

With communication and information-exchange becoming such an important part of our daily lives I felt we had to do something. For a couple of years now a set of ideas were brewing in my head, and that day I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I had repeated these lines so often, in so many conversations, at so many dinner parties that I felt like a broken record: all talk and no action. The time had come to choose: I would either put up or shut up. I stopped talking and started thinking while my roomies continued their discussions, I remember that I suddenly proclaimed: „that’s it! I can’t take it anymore! I’m gonna build this f*cking thing and get it over with – f*ck!“ and disappeared into my room.

A couple of hours later I came back with this:

The importance wasn’t so much the act of writing down an eloquent primer on the idea (maybe you will notice the non-eloquence) but that this was the actual first step in turning this idea into a reality. And as they (Goethe/Murray) say:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!

That night, for protonet and all of us working our asses off making this dream real, the magic had just started.