For more than a decade, I have been astonished and overwhelmed by the magic of the Web, yet underwhelmed by its application and influence on our social and economic well being.

The wealth gap is at its peak, the digital divide keeps widening, the middle class is shrinking and the small is starving!  And we all know that I am not being dramatic here.

In 1955, 1/3 of the US GDP was controlled by Fortune 500 companies. Their portion grew to more than half by year 2000 and still going strong.  This basically means that thousands of family farms, Mom & Pop stores and other small businesses are replaced by Wall Mart, Agribusiness and other large companies. This basically means that “small is NOT beautiful”!

Circa 2008, tides may start turning again.   With Wall Street faltering and fluctuating dramatically, we inevitably start looking into Main Street as an alternative to our livelihood.  We have to.

The trouble is that this sector has not been sexy for a long time.  For one thing it is about the old and tired. Also it makes our head hurt because it’s fragmented, it’s vast, it’s messy and it represents the real world, and we really don’t want to deal with that, do we? So, no infrastructure has been built here, online or offline to strengthen this sector due to its complexity and organic messiness.

Main Street is about the local reality, it’s about the small business, about the little guy making a buck and reinvesting it in his own local economy and not in an indifferent and distant investment fund.   Main Street doesn’t reinforce our fascination with the big and the glamorous.  Who cares about the bakery, and the other little guys anyway? Even if they produce half of our bread and butter = GDP year after year? So, we didn’t put much attention here. If we did, we wouldn’t have 90% small business failure rate. Would we?

In reality, it has not been so easy to build a solid infrastructure here either. This is a non-linear jurisdiction. Too many people, too many variables, too much risk and slow returns.   Our algorithms can’t quite predict every behavior here!

But look again and take notice, because our unsexy Main Street corners start looking awfully attractive again, especially with energy costs sky rocketing and massive off-shore outsourcing culture causing holes in our economy.  Take notice of Main Street as a significant economic engine, re-establishing a horizontal wealth distribution system and a better economic model again.

But above and beyond all this, take notice of Main Street because it’s about our own human capital and potential HERE and NOW.   Because it’s about hidden talents and treasures in each and every corner of our own communities waiting to be untapped, and because it’s about a world that is real and that alone makes it sexier than the fantasy of “Big Fluff”.

Tides do turn and Walls do fall.   And once again, this is happening in preparation of a new wave to come.  A New Wave of Inclusion; that which is initiated by us, ordinary people and enabled by the magic of the Web, at last…