Today is the first OneWebDay, a global
awareness event to “create, maintain, advance and promote a global day to celebrate
online life.” It was founded by Susan Crawford, associate professor at the Cardozo School
of Law in New York City. Some big Web names have been lined up in support – including Sir
Tim Berners-Lee and Craig Newmark of craigslist. Virtual celebrations will be held in
Second Life and there will be real-world celebrations around the globe.
I can certainly get behind a message like
this:
“The idea behind OneWebDay is to tell the story of how the web changes lives around
the world. We’re making the web visible so that we don’t take it for granted.”
Fred Wilson does the Al
Gore thing and riffs on the ecology metaphor:
“The web is like planet earth. It’s an amazing resource that we need to value,
respect, protect, and celebrate.”
Even skeptical tech news website The Register gets into
the spirit:
“The idea behind OneWebDay is to remember that the web is not just a jumble of
machines, but also a social environment.”
The About Page of OneWebDay lays out the message in detail:
“The Web is worth celebrating.
OneWebDay is one day a year when we all – everyone around the physical globe – can
celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and
communities.
As with Earth Day – an inspiration and model for OneWebDay – it’s up to the
celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration,
connection, creativity, freedom.
By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before,
and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly.”
Pic: jonasgoldstein
Suggested activities include: Collective art projects (see yourself as a pixel); Music
mashups; Contributing to a slide show of flickr images of people doing the onewebday hand
signal (see above); Teach your grandmother to blog; Make a website for your club, church,
school; Employees: teach your boss to IM; Doctors: Set up web-based self-scheduling for
patients.
I’m all for this (well, except maybe the hand signal…). The thought behind it is a
great one, so Read/WriteWeb encourages you to get out there and celebrate the Web!
