Lets start with a question - How often do you ask yourself:

• How on earth did they think there/then?

...then set off spending quite a bit of time trying to reverse engineer it somehow!

I still do it all the time, more than once a day usually. Particularly when stumbling on new things, such as when hearing news about how bad state our world is in, or when watching a lecture or talk about an interesting topic.

To simplify, the big question for me ended something like this:

• Do I want to feel needed just because I can follow someone else's instructions, no matter how stupid they sounded - Or because I can process information, think and use the new knowledge to make something better with?

For me it was, in the end, a simple choice!

Followers & Leaders

In society we are often told there are either followers or leaders. To a large degree that have worked really well. Just look at the technology progress made since electricity was invented. However, leaders are often also rulers. While there are good leaders, there is sadly also too many who are not so good. Those who demand us to follow their instructions without asking questions.

A leader also need a dominion to rule over. Traditionally that has been an area, most often in the form of a guarder piece of our planet with borders we have to pass through.

Today things are different, we have a global network called the Internet which we use to communicate with each others in various ways. This has, in my book, turned everything upside down. No longer do we need to wait for filtered information (the state and media) to select and tailor-make the information we are allowed to see.

• Never before in history have we as citizens been able to check things for ourselves. Contact nearly anybody almost anywhere in the world and just ask!

It doesn't stop there. Today we have gone bye by just asking questions and hoping for an answer. Today we collaborate freely over the internet, we do things together no traditional borders can ever stop us from again.

Still, the old leaders don't want to give up their power. They have tried to regain their powers through the backdoor with schemes such as SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. Then, thanks to the courage of Edward Snowden we have learned how the NSA is trespassing on our human rights to privacy and trust. They claim they do it to fight terrorism, but has thus far failed badly proving even the slighted success! Instead we have learned that the government, the US government, who has given them the means, in reality have little clue to the extent they have taken it.

Or does it know?

The Open Source movement shows a new way forward

For the last six years I have had the pleasure of being part of the Drupal community. I know now that I have not been the nicest player there, but during the last half year it has really sinked in for me.

In open source there are few traditional leaders. Instead it is filled with passionate individuals who come together to solve problems together. Sure, debates are often heated and sometimes unsolvable. But hey, that's just life and Open Source has actually a fine working solution for that to.

• If you are not happy with the direction, then just fork the project and go on in your own direction!

No one can stop you and few will. Sure, there will be discussions but they are usually done in the open and everyone has the opportunity to give their own arguments about it. This is, actually, also an effective way to keep traditional leaders at bay as the open source leaders gets their powers from the way they lead, the way they inspire others to want to be part of something good!

In my experience, few open source leaders have needs that match traditional ones. They just want to get on with it, build something better that everyone have access to use.

In fact, most of the internet is built on Open Source. Especially 20+ years ago when few saw it's potential. That is something we should be very grateful for today. Just imagine how bad it would have been if they back then had been as eager to protect their ideas as the smartphone manufactures are today. Ideas that they themselves in many cases got the inspiration to from others.

On thing is sure, it would have looked nothing like the internet we have today - An internet worth fighting for!

Only way is up!

I'm currently living on welfare in Sweden. It is the only thing that separates me from being homeless. My path down has been quite an slippery slope. There where times I thought I had cracked it and life was better. At least for a while until it began to go, even further, south again. It was always the same thing:

• I never managed to fit in with society, or even smaller groups, and in the end it got me running somewhere else!

Basically after a while I gradually felt more trapped, that life began to go in repeated circles and there where less and less things around to get inspired and/or motivated about.

That has finally changed and for the first time ever I am actually looking forward with a feeling I have something to share. The growing feeling of being needed is making me jump out of bed, ready to take on whatever will happens with excitement.

Somehow the majority of everything I have been through survived - At least it seems it got locked down somewhere in the back of my mind. But it isn't until now, at the age of 46, I have found a way to process it all, understand its meaning and finally feel I am really starting contributing back to the world in a meaningful way.

Followers & Thinkers

My proposal:

• Follow what, including people, inspires your curiosity.
• Listen to what they have to say, how they say it and the passion you can feel from how they express it.
• Then also think about how that fits with your own reality, how it help explain things.

That's pretty much what I do now, plus trying to figure out how to do it better together with others!

Here are a one inspiring person in my life: Elon Musk

I watched this recording of a conversation Elon had with Khan Academy. I had admired him for quite some time for what he has acomplished especially with Tesla Motors and the pure *madness* with SpaceX. I had no idea what I was about to experience, but I am glad I did.

For me, this became a guided tour of Elon's brain and the way he thinks - His thought process. Never before had I come to understand the world, the universe like that before. For the first time I begun to understand the concept of time and space!

I was hooked!

Since that day, February 4th, the world around me has at an accelerating pace started to change. The roller-coaster between *heaven* and *hell* I once was having has changed! Today the world is a beautiful thing, something presious we all share.

But the best thing I have learned is this:

• We are slowly beginning to understand!

#PowertoCreate made it all come together for me. Therefore I can't think of anything better than let Matthew Taylor, Chief executive of the RSA tell you in his own words.