and enriching them with new functions, useful to expand the sharing economy and empathy among human beings.
The collaborative Commons is based on the idea that the thermodynamic laws cannot be ignored, minimized, avoided or violated. The first law of thermodynamics clearly tells us that nothing is destroyed but everything is transformed. Therefore, burning an object to close the waste cycle does not at all entail its elimination or freedom from it, but simply having changed its state, from solid to gas and making it even more dangerous not only for the environment but also for human health. All the energy of the second industrial revolution is based on the violation of the laws of thermodynamics. The combustion of a fuel to bring about propulsion or the turning of turbines is a thermodynamic folly with lethal consequences to human health. Changing the paradigm from the fossil cycle to the solar cycle, therefore entails activating a new, less harmful economy, consequently more in line with an illness prevention policy and closer to the objective of zero disease.
The Third Industrial Revolution is creating healthier and cleaner societies, an agriculture without pesticides or genetically modified organisms (GMO), a distributed industry instead of one centralized on very reduced emissions. On the contrary, continuing with the vertical logic will inevitably produce health pollution as an effect of soil, water and waste landfills contamination and the poisoning of air by incinerators.
However, with his new book, Rifkin causes us to reflect , he also covers the correlations between environment and health, he illuminates us on how the doctor/patient relation is changing in the dynamic of a new community of distributed health. Rifkin reaches this considerable result described also as the âCommons of Healthâ.
Why not imagine, in fact, beyond the Commons of Information, the Commons of Energy, also the Commons of Health? âA Commons in which modern technologies of distributed and interactive information permit Dr Gille Frydman, founder of ACOR (Association of Cancer Online resources) to develop a model of participative medicine in which different subjects converge in a sole Commons. Patients, researchers, doctors, financers, producers of medical equipment, therapists, pharmaceutical companies and health professionals, would all be committed in collaborating to improve the care of the patientâ (Rifkin, Society at Zero Marginal Cost, page 343).
This is not a remote or an unrealistic hypothesis. âPatientslikemeâ, a social network of over 200,000 e-patients already fights 1,800 diseases. An important achievement they have obtained has been exposing the scandal of lithium-based pharmaceuticals used for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. A study based on information received online showed how these drugs were totally uninfluential in the treatment against ALS. Such an example shows how the âopen sourceâ approach in medical research can produce important results, as opposed to competitive research, through which data remains trapped under a vertical, limited and secretive system.
In medicine, more than in any other sector, it becomes increasingly fundamental to dispose of âbig dataâ with adequate algorithms, following the crowdsourcing model in order to identify sanitary models at low marginal costs and yet with very high efficiency. In the chapter âEveryone is a doctorâ of his latest book, Jeremy Rifkin reminds us that, nowadays, the Internet counts with hundreds of health Open Source Commons. Rifkin consequently highlights that âeverything suggests that their number will increase significantly in the coming years, when in various countries the electronic storage of health data will make health care support services more fluid and efficient... The big data, that will therefore be made possible to generate in the United States as in all other countries, will form a pool of information that, if properly exploited by open source Commons oriented health by patients, may, subject to appropriate safeguards on confidentiality, revolutionize the health sectorâ (Rifkin, Ibidem, page 348) .
Hence, the message launched from the collective of sensitive and intelligent doctors interpreting Rifkinian thought, among whom are Dr. Angela Meggiolaro, Dr Bruno Corda and Dr Angelo Barbato, completes the vision of a society of zero emissions, waste, kilometres and of a zero marginal cost economy.
The âZeroâ vision expressed in the book-manifesto Zero Zone, written by professor Livio de Santoli and myself, thanks to the contribution of Angelo Barbato, has permitted us to trigger the spread of awareness around the Zero Disease concept. This occurs in a scenery in which the internet of things and the Third Industrial Revolution bring the centre of health care precisely onto the territory, calling for the necessity to increase prevention as a âPillarâ of the distributive model of health in medicine in the zone.
The new vision highlights that the traditional model based in the hospital has become ineffective for the treatment of chronic diseases which are increasingly diffused due to the lifestyles and occupations imposed since the Second Industrial Revolution, and which can be reduced by enhancing the prevention pillar. Telemedicine, home care, fight against chronic diseases, doctorâs actions on the territoryâs schools and public administrations and especially the adoption of proactive methods by the citizen-patients, will increasingly revolutionize how we deal with health, moving the focus from the institution to the area.
This new health model of the third Industrial Revolution will revolutionize the current paradigms of health care, reaching extraordinary and very rapid results, mainly through prevention. The new care model is the heart of the book âZero Diseaseâ. The realization of such a possible future depends entirely on us, starting from public administrations and health care enterprises. Notwithstanding citizens and their propulsive aggregating force which lead increasingly rapidly towards a biospheric, empathic, collaborative and sustainable lifestyle, where Community becomes Zero Zone.
Angelo Consoli
Director of the European Office of Jeremy Rifkin
President of CETRI-TIRES (Third Industrial Revolution European Society)
Co-Author with Livio de Santoli of the Manifesto-book âZero Zoneâ.
1. The wellness and health management in the ideological framework of Jeremy Rifkin
Bruno Corda Angelo Barbato
Jeremy Rifkin is one of the worldâs most recognized economists who in his recent work1 2 has stressed the progressive rise of a new economic system, gradually alternating and replacing capitalism. The engine of this transformation is the digital revolution, allowing the internet of things. Telecommunicationsâ Internet of things (or, more properly, the Internet of Things or IoT), is a neologism referring to the extension of Internet to the world of objects and concrete places3 . The internet of things is made up of a network between the energy internet, the communication internet and the logistics internet4 . Rifkin summarizes his economic thinking in three basic paradigms (energy, communications and logistics), stating that in the evolutionary change of these archetypes, man becomes the star of a new industrial revolution.
The first industrial revolution (about 1760-1870) was an economic transformation process or industrialization of society in which the agricultural and craft-trade systems became modernized and industrialized. Characterized by the generalized use of power-driven machines and of new, inanimate energy sources (such as fossil fuels - steam engines), the scheme was favored by a strong component of technological innovation. This was additionally accompanied by the phenomena of growth, economic development and profound socio-cultural and even political changes. This first industrial revolution began in the textile (cotton), metallurgical (iron) and mining (hard coal) industries.
The insurgence of the second industrial revolution (about 1870-1970) is conventionally set to 1870 with the introduction of electricity, chemicals and oil.
The third industrial revolution (1970) refers to the effects of mass introduction into industry of electronics, telecommunications and informatics5
