Lia Keith, OWN Ambassadors Founder

Get Ready World, the IFFIES are Coming!

            As social media has become more and more popular and I have become better versed in its workings, I have noticed a new group that is going to the head of the pack and becoming the new leaders of the world.  They form how we think, what we watch, how we vote, what we believe, and how we spend our time and money. I call them the IFFIES and I am thrilled that they are here, that they are taking over and that they are changing things.

            Who are the IFFIES? They are Innovators, Facilitators, Free-Thinkers, Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Seekers and they are all over the internet and their numbers are growing all the time.  While the established institutions of yesterday are sitting back thinking they run the world, the IFFIES are defining the future.  They are creating the way the world will look in the decades and centuries ahead and let me tell you, the future looks very bright in their eyes.

            The IFFIES are artists, scientists, and engineers and they look at the world as their creative canvas.  They are creating the institutions of tomorrow and financing it through crowd sourcing and collaboration.  For example, Kiva has had almost 700,000 lenders, who have lent close to 300 million dollars in microloans to people all over the world. The repayment rate on these loans is almost 99%.  The Khan Academy is turning the education system on its head with videotaped lessons for free to anyone in the world. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just announced that it will create a college program available for FREE to anyone in the world, no admissions, no costs, just log in and learn (yes, I do mean that MIT!).  IndieGoGo is funding artists and their work through the internet by making it a collaborative process between the artist and the viewer. We see an artist’s work, like what we see, and contribute to their ideas and the collective funds the passion of the artist.

            IFFIES are from anywhere in the world, any age, any socioeconomic background, race, gender, religion or sexual orientation.  They don’t care who you are or what you look like; they care about what you create and what you contribute to society.   They also know that we are at a time in history where technology and access to it have met and allowed them to create a brand new world that looks different than anything that has come before it.  They believe in the value of every single individual and the importance of that individual’s dreams.  IFFIES know that by valuing everyone, the collective prospers and that the Universe has enough abundance for all.  They SHARE, they make platforms available for FREE so that we all can have access to the tools of tomorrow, and they TRUST and BELIEVE in the goodness of humanity.

            Where will the IFFIES take us? I believe we will have a worldwide constitution in the future, complete with its own Bill of Rights for the planet.  I think we will have a worldwide currency that will be determined by the market, not the banks, governments, and institutions that manipulate it now.  I believe education will be equal all over the world and your success will finally truly be determined by, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “the content of your character.” The idea that people will be able to live the life of their dreams and those dreams will be supported by the collective is going to come to fruition.  I watched Ted Turner on OWN’s Masterclass and he explained that our social structures have not kept pace with our technological advances. He is right, but the IFFIES are catching up fast and the world is going to be a much better place in the near future! So watch out world, here we come!