I’ll be participating in the 2007 edition of One Web Day, this Saturday, September 22. The organizers of One Web Day are encouraging us all to make short videos and “post them on blip.tv or youtube or dotsub.com tagged onewebday2007 .” If you don’t make online videos, they’re suggesting you write something on your blog or Web site. And if you don’t have a blog, write a nice juicy comment on someone else’s One Web Day post. Their suggested topics include how the Web has changed your life, how you hope the Web will change the world for the better in the future, or even something you’ve done online with people in other countries.
Here’s a short version of their manifesto:
The internet is made of people, not just machines. It’s up to us to protect it. We can use OneWebDay around the world to raise awareness of the threats to the internet — including censorship, inadequate access, control of various kinds — and to celebrate the positive impact of the internet on human lives.
Since I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister, my One Web Day post will probably bring up Tim Berners-Lee’s essay WWW, UU, and I. But I’m thinking that I might want to explore the links between visual art (especially performance art, conceptual art, and video art) and the Web. Check in on Saturday, and see what I come up with.
Update, September 18:
Tim Berners-Lee has posted his One Web Day video, and he uses his video to talk a little bit about the future of the Web. Of course he talks about net neutrality, and says that a key aspect of the Web is the fact that anybody can connect to anybody; that’s something we must keep in the future.
He also warns against “web rot,” which occurs when people design Web sites carelessly: “they don’t make good HTML, they don’t close their tags.” He encourages all those of us who make Web sites to validate our HTML. (Admission: my Web site does not validate because somewhere, somehow, I used two invalid div id values. Rats. At least I closed all my tags. And I’ll correct the div id value problems RSN.)
Ooh – what an idea. Thanks for spreading the word, as I had no idea. I’ve been more away from the interwebs than usual this past week, but maybe (okay, unlikely, but there’s a slim possibility) I will participate in this, too.