8W8 - Global Space Tribes: a post-modern journey through globalization in the internet age powered by the world modeling engine 8W8 (Paperback)

by Ralf Hirt (Author)
Key Phrases: sky level, earth substance, hip hoppers, Golden Sky, New York City, Madam Chee (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
8W8 Offers a Glimpse Into the Future

Who knew that the VP of a women's media network could be to technologically in tune. Such is the case with Ralf Hirt and his new novel, `8W8 - Global Space Tribes,' currently holding down the top spot as the #1 best-selling book for Amazon's Kindle e-book reader.

A forward-looking geek's dream, the book looks at 15 Internet activists who come together to develop a world modeling engine, 8W8 (designed to make the invisibilities of the world visible). Designed to discover and identify the individual digital elements and activities of the world's online population, a previously unrevealed world is uncovered.

Chaos ensues.

Nah, it's just always fun to say that when pushing a story.

If you are interested in the potential evolution of the digital space, and how the Internet will continue to provide a voice to those who went previously unheard, `8W8 - Global Space Tribes' is for you.

Navigating your way through the 21st century might be easier with Hirt's compass.

Learn more at 8W8.com. -- Forevergeek.com, March 28, 2008

Fifteen of globalization's children collaborate to design a piece of software that renders visible the invisible networks of the Internet Age.

Readers should be warned at the outset that this is no novel in the conventional sense, but a Socratic dialogue for the early 21st century of globalization. That dialogue is sparked when Oskar Feller, an IT journalist and international jet-setter, gazes out of an airplane window at the nighttime lights of the cities of Belgium far below. Oskar, or "OK Fellow" as his friends call him, feels a sense of frustration that those city lights can't tell him much about the people they serve: What are their incomes? Where do they work? What do they believe in? How many are BMW-motorcycle enthusiasts like him? To get answers to questions like these on a global scale, Oskar enlists help from his 14 fellow members of the Golden Sky, a loosely coalesced think-tank whose membership represents various economic, political, scientific and cultural professions. At the palatial Hawaiian home of Internet entrepreneur Winston Chee, the 15 "Golden Skyers" collaboratively give birth to the computer-modeling program dubbed "8W8" (a strange-seeming choice of name, until they explain that "eight" is an auspicious number in Chinese numerology and "W" stands for "world people"). The notional 8W8 program allows the user to enter the cockpit of a virtual helicopter and tour a dynamic landscape representing not Earth's geography, but its invisible demographic, economic, environmental and even religious characteristics. The author's decision to present this intriguing concept as a novel is an idiosyncratic one, making the book feel at times like a tug-of-war between an inventor and a novelist.

At its best, 8W8-Global Space Tribes provides a gentle, relatively harmless way to introduce the reader to a bevy of interesting new terms and concepts; at its worst, it comes off as the novelization of a software user's manual. -- Kirkus Reviews (Nielsen Business Media), May 2, 2008

Product Description
8W8 - Global Space Tribes is a new way to see the world. It is written for everyone who uses the Internet, travels and is interested in any aspect of the world in the 21st century. The Golden Sky is a community comprised of 15 charismatic Internet activists from the worlds of business, finance, media, government, bio sciences, medicine, social and religious activists and environmentalists. They came together to meet on Hawaii in the fantastically beautiful mountain home, EA-RA, of the Chinese Internet billionaire, Winston Chee. There they develop a new world modeling engine, ultimately named, 8W8, which would find the invisible digital elements, i.e. the online population and digital activities, and render them visible to the world stake holding factors they define. Global Space Tribes are the Internet users The Golden Sky is able to identify with 8W8. They exist out of elements that come together in streams and interconnect with other streams around the world and can be visualized and volumized from the cockpit of the 8W8 world modeling engine, which The Golden Skyers dubbed the 8W8 Helicopter for the purpose of entering virtual rides. The pilot of the 8W8 Helicopter, albeit, an Internet user, a marketer, a traveler or political candidate or simply "You" of any background, could virtually ride over the flattened but fragmented world identifying subjectively or objectively new virtual structures, tracking the flow and concentrations of criteria such as: the presence or lack of wealth, trade, interconnectivity, beliefs, environmental conditions, peace record, happiness, and any other factors that are normally invisible for the naked eye. When BridgeMan, Winston's business partner from San Francisco, comes to EA-RA and learns about 8W8, he saw an immediate benefit for himself and the world in general. He extolled the concept as a way of making the invisibilities of the 21st century visible and of improving the state of the world...

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Product Details

• Paperback: 334 pages
• Publisher: 8W8 Ventures Incorporated (January 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979954908
• ISBN-13: 978-0979954900
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,164,684 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Way to See The World of the 21st Century, March 22, 2008

By	Jean Hao (New York City) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ralf Hirt's 8W8 Global Space Tribes goes beyond the concept of a flat
world, it draws the reader into a virtual "What if?" reality. What if
the Internet could be used to erase national borders and
ethno-cultural divides creating entirely new social systems... global
space tribes!

Taking a ride in Hirt's 8W8 Global Space Tribes' Helicopter is more
than experiencing the Web 3.0 envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee as "an
overlay of scalable vector graphics (with) everything rippling and
folding and looking misty:" it's entering a 5-D world where Time and
Space serve as connective tissue further compressing an already
flattened world.

Eschewing technical jargon that could alienate the average
non-techgeek, Hirt, instead, introduces the reader to 15 individuals
who call themselves the Golden Sky. They are an IT think tank composed
of international business people, lawyers, politicians,
environmentalists, a musician, a doctor and a philosopher, all of whom
share one thing in common--a futuristic vision of the future. They come
together on the Big Island of Hawaii, in the home of one of their
members, Winston Chee, an IT entrepreneur, for a week-long break out
in which they intend to focus on an IT conundrum: how to make the
invisible, visible.

The author cleverly uses the house, itself, as a living entity that,
in many ways, embodies many of the same elements as their quest.
Called EA-RA, it is a six-story mansion built into the side of a
mountain. It's exterior is a semicircular sheet of black glass infused
with golden fiber which faces south and stretches in a semicircle 180
degrees from east to west. The effect is that it not only catches the
sunrise but the setting sun as well, all the while reflecting the
sun's rays like a golden mirror. Unseen and undetected from outside is
the vast interior which encloses a self-sustaining environment
including a farm on its ground floor, the entire panoply and
requisites of a modern spa and convention center on the the five top
floors, all of which are hidden from view to the outside observer.

The hero of the piece is a San Francisco based IT journalist called
Oskar Kiernan Feller, or more commonly called by his friends, O.K.
Fellow. He is probably a manifestation of the author, himself,
conflicted and driven. It is O.K. Fellow whom we first meet as he sits
in an airplane flying from San Francisco to an IT conference in
Berlin. It is a trip he has made many times in the past, but on this
trip he is gripped with a sense of anxiety. He has flown millions of
miles without an incident, but his mind has made a calculation that at
some point there had to be a "statistical fluctuation" which might
result in...? He tries to stop thinking about it by repeating a mantra
silently to himself.

Ultimately, somewhere over St. Louis he experiences an existential
moment when he begins to question what he is seeing. That results in a
dialectical switch where, for a moment, he is watching himself trying
to find like-minded individuals among the houses and buildings below.
We are introduced to all the main characters in the first two
chapters. Except for their different vocations, they all share the
same uneasiness as O.K. Fellow. They want to see the unseen elements
of their world. For some, it's a search to find people as
themselves,for the others, it is to be able to see the actual flow of
elements into streams and rivers which make up what they call "Global
Space Tribes."

Eventually, they develop the concept of a virtual helicopter which
they imagine could hover above the earth with an instrument panel.
This tool could discern hidden values from single elements to
concentrations of elements, "mountains," as they eventually see them.

This is a fast and enjoyable read for both the lay reader as well as
the technophile.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget the flat world: it's as passé as Web 2., March 27, 2008

By	V. Pal (Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"8W8 Global Space Tribes" leads us trough a flattened pre-Columbian InterWorld which defines the next metamorphosis of the Internet Web 3, and perhaps beyond. Rather than following a convoluted trail through a multidimensional world, the writer brings us to one spot, a vortex where all aspects of our physical world come together; where each individual identifies her or himself as a member of a tribe. Members of these tribes can be living in the Amazon, the Urals or Nebraska, however, more than a common mindset knits these tribes together: they share a common weltanschauung.

Using the clever device of a helicopter (8W8 Heli), resources, markets and capital flow can be mapped like rain water forming rivulets; then streams, rivers and, ultimately oceans. For me as a businessperson and a fan of new technologies, this book has been awesome since it reveals what, hithertofore, had been invisible... the "Golden" flow.

5.0 out of 5 stars Volumizing Green Awareness - Hook me up, baby! , June 18, 2008

By	the i-tribe generation "the i-tribe generation" (USA) - See all my reviews

I have lived in difference places as a student and working adult across three continents and I was lucky enough that I could also live in NYC for a few years. The longer I live in busy cities and traveled the largest mega-centers on this planet the more I got into the sustainable, holistic view of life and needless to say the ultimate appreciation of environmental awareness.

I am not an Internet geek or professional, but understand the impact of the Net, at least I had thought so far. 8W8 - Global Space Tribes has made me feel part of something bigger, something global, and something total- and given me a certain sense of connection. In the past I surfed more like I read. Now I surf like I create and innovate. Hirt's story is developing comprehensively and comes from so many angles that it is hard to believe it does not get lost on its journey. The answer to this phenomena is 8W8, the world modeling engine envisioned and programmed by the fabulous members of the Internet think tank The Golden Sky. Understanding marketing a little from my business administration course - so far so good what the segmentation and fragmentation of the digital age is concerned, but embedding this in subjectively defined formulas allowing to quantify whatever I want to visualize has blown my mind away. I surf and I do. I model and I see. I see and I act. I act and I create. Thing is after having read and in fact enjoyed 8W8 - Global Space Tribes I do many things in a more thought through way and more powerfu. Everyone participating in the world of the Global Space tribes is part of this great evolution of moving the action up to where we connect and build. I have hooked up, baby! I want to create green awareness. Yes, we can.

Fantastic. Highly recommended.

from the i-tribe generation.