Let us grow in a free and unlimited world!
The idea of creating Noosfeer came whilst visiting my family in Colombia.
During my PhD studies, I published several articles hoping to help researchers all over the world, specially those from emerging countries.
To publish the articles, I wasn’t paid, on the contrary, I was pleased they were accepted for publication.
Surprisingly, when I tried to download them in Colombia, to share with fellow researchers, I realized that I had to pay $40 per article.
Can you imagine that?
Innovation is being controlled and distributed only to the people that have the money. If you want to be a researcher, an inventor, an entrepreneur and you don’t have the money to access the articles, you will struggle to innovate.
To truly innovate, we need to know the past
Ever wondered why 90% of startups in emerging countries are replicas of successful foreign companies?
Startups from emerging countries frequently only have access to the tip of the iceberg of information. Often, they struggle to have a more “global” vision of things, because they don’t have access to the past.
With “past”, I mean the events, ideas and stories that shaped the history of an industry, a country, the world…
By having access to relevant and/or specialized information, inventors, entrepreneurs and researches can avoid making the same mistakes other people made, and they won’t have to start from nothing.
They need a way to connect with past.
This idea pushed me to act. If I wanted to help people innovate, I needed to give them easy access to the information they needed. Access to all the beneficial and influential knowledge created through the years.
I gathered a team and we got into action. We created a platform to share scientific articles for free, so anyone could access them, improve them and create with them. Sounds great, right?
Well, we failed to make that platform take off….
It is not that easy to go uphill against the control of information. Aaron Swartz, sadly, was one of its viticms.
For researchers, me and my team were nobody, we were not at Harvard, Stanford or any Ivy league university. There were even some of the researchers telling us “you will never make it”.
You know what? That just motivated us more. We adapted.
The magic of the Internet
The Internet is full of amazing people who are sharing their knowledge in exchange for some recognition, sometimes, they don’t even care if they have the recognition as long as their ideas help other people improve their lives.
Today, through reading blogs and content websites, you can learn many useful things, faster than you would by any other traditional means.
So, why stick only to scientific articles when we can help distribute the knowledge freely available on the Internet ?
That is our main mission with Noosfeer.
Internet is a magic place, loads of interesting things happen in there every second. It helps humanity to go forward and create a “collective mind”.
You can adapt solutions to local needs (great startups initiators) by exploring a global way of thinking.
We have to be careful though, as always, there is a lot of inaccurate information (disinformation), and it can escalate quickly if we are not disciplined enough to confirm it with other sources.
That is why Facebook’s initiative, Internet.org, can be helpful but also really dangerous.
Facebook’s initiative towards a “free-internet”
Facebook is negotiating with the main telephone companies in emerging countries in order to provide access to “certain” applications without paying for mobile data. The main applications are for example Wikipedia, Bing, among others.
The BIG problem is that this initiative limits the amount of sources and information its users can access, therefore, it can easily create a huge disinformation wave.
We have to remember that Facebook is a money making business. Therefore, through Internet.org, the emerging of new offers, new websites, new products and new startups will be controlled by big powerful capitalist desires.
This can limit creativity and innovation, success will be even harder to attain if you are not part of the “selected apps”.
Why not improve this initiative by providing easy and cheap access to ALL knowledge and not just a few “selected” websites?
This is where Noosfeer comes in. We are working hard to make all the information of the Internet more accessible. Regardless of its source and without limitation. We are based on Net Neutrality.
The only missing piece is YOU!
Let’s create together a world in which everyone can grow free, with the access to the information we need to improve our lives.
It was never so simple to help. By using Noosfeer yourself, you will be reading and learning more, something that is highly beneficial for you.
At the same time, you are helping others simply through improving the service.
By investing time in yourself, you will be participating in the creation of a collective mind for a better world.
