What is Reboot about and why am I here?

Reboot's theme this year is Human?, and it's the reason I'm here - because being human is the essence of successful social media and social media might just be the enabler / an enabler for being a successful human.

For all that people try to pigeon hole me, you and anyone else who has the vaguest passing interest in blogs or social media as 'the blogger guy' (or gal), the one thing we're all about is humanity and what it means to be human.

You know what I'm talking about; the person you spoke to about blogs who just didn't get it, did they actually get the whole concept of what their role as a human is? Our opening talk, to get us in the frame of mind, explains.

1.5 tonnes of matter flows through us each year. 98% of our atoms are replaced in a year. We are in a state of permanent reincarnation, and here is the connection with digital media. With digital media we never lose information because we have something in which to put it and, in time, we push the digital media off one device onto another, as one device becomes obsolete and the next one is the renewed version.

What about our human selves? We need to make sure that we regularly reinvent ourselves, we need to reboot our minds and relationships in the same way that our bodies naturally reboot constantly.

So what is being human? We want to dare, care and share. Humans are not selfish irrational beings, we want to dare, care and share in order to gain attention for our ideas which then brings us sex, friends and employment. How Danish.

However, up until now I don't think it's been possible to do this kind of daring, caring and sharing without having a suspicious starting point: those who have wanted to contribute to a larger group of people have had to climb to positions of power to exert their contributions.

Now, though, everyone can take risks without personal cost, everyone can care for others without being seen as a martyr, everyone can share their idea without having to be at the top of the hierarchical pile.

We've gone from Civilisation 1.0 to Civilisation 2.0

New, old economy: Gifts and sharing the long tail via search

New, old food: Variety of wild plants and animals

New, old energy: Renewable solar energy in the environment

New, old social order: bottom-up, peer-ro-peer, no HQ

New, old habitation: Nomads with bonds to the homeland.