Bar­rack O. has been pres­i­dent of the United States for almost a year, yet still he didn’t solve all of our large-scale prob­lems: there’s still hunger, ill­nesses, wars and injus­tice — maybe he can’t do it that fast. I guess that grave change will not occur until 2012 (no, not the end of the world, but the next US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions). The team of Wired Italy takes a dif­fer­ent approach in terms of “who” to believe in: the fun­da­men­tal changes dri­ven by the inter­net are far more severe than those trig­gered by a sin­gle per­son, even if usu­ally referred to as the most pow­er­ful man in the world. So Wired Italy pro­poses that the inter­net per se should receive the next Peace Nobel Prize.

Mario Por­tanova of Wired Italy told me about the cam­paign tomor­row morn­ing. For more details, take a look at the offi­cial web­site internetforpeace.org. At first glance, I found the idea rather weird, but after read­ing (and agree­ing with) the short and con­cise man­i­festo, I think this def­i­nitely makes sense:

We have finally real­ized that the Inter­net is much more than a net­work of com­put­ers. It is an end­less web of peo­ple.
Men and women from every cor­ner of the globe are con­nect­ing to one another, thanks to the biggest social inter­face ever known to human­ity. Dig­i­tal cul­ture has laid the foun­da­tions for a new kind of society.

And this soci­ety is advanc­ing dia­logue, debate and con­sen­sus through com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Because democ­racy has always flour­ished where there is open­ness, accep­tance, dis­cus­sion and par­tic­i­pa­tion. And con­tact with oth­ers has always been the most effec­tive anti­dote against hatred and conflict.

That’s why the Inter­net is a tool for peace.

Inter­net for Peace man­i­festo
That’s why any­one who uses it can sow the seeds of non-violence.

And that’s why the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to the Net.

A Nobel for each and every one of us.

If you agree with the above, please help us spread the man­i­festo — I guess but­tons and ban­ners will be avail­able soon (like I men­tioned, ifp launched today). For now, you can down­load this jpeg to express your support: