OneWebDay

When a U.S. federal legislator wants quick information about a complicated subject he/she goes to the Congressional Research Service and asks for help.

Now, thanks to the Center for Democracy & Technology and friends, the reports that CRS generate for legislators are available to all of us – here. It’s wonderful, authoritative, interesting – and our tax dollars paid for it. The Web brings it to us.

Many thanks to the State of the Net organizers for the OneWebDay presence today. It was terrific to be there. We showed videos, talked to many people, foisted buttons and stickers on everyone who walked by, and generally had a very busy time talking about OneWebDay.

This third year of OneWebDay is shaping up to be the best yet. Among many other things that may come out of today’s conversations, we’re hoping for a big Washington DC event in a public place this time around – we’ll post here about the details.

Thanks to everyone who came by today. Onward.

In a recent Slate article Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu suggests that the recent proposal by AT&T to monitor internet traffic for copyright violations is the equivalent of corporate seppuku. Read more…

We here at OneWebDay (to the extent there is a “here”) are working away on plans for 2008.

We’re close to finding communications/PR help that will standardize our communications.

We’d like to have a package to send to teachers around the world with suggestions for OneWebDay events for Sept. 22, as well as sample letters to be sent to local officials for recognition of the big day.

And we’re responding to lots of emails.

For 2008, we plan to expand the list of cities substantially and make sure each city can see what the others are doing. More coming as the months go by.

More people read newspapers online in 2007 than in the previous year, setting a record, according to the latest data from the Newspaper Association of America. The organization reported that 60 million people visited an online newspaper last year, compared with 56.4 million in 2006 — a 6.3% increase in unique audience. The average time spent per person also jumped in 2007 to almost 43 minutes compared with 41 minutes in 2006.

This is rough for the newspaper industry – but good for news dissemination online. You can read the full article here. When world events happen, people rush to the web to find out more.

Which is why access to the Internet should be treated like an essential public utility around the world.

ISOC chapters will be meeting in New Delhi on Wed., Feb. 13, 2008 to (among other things) talk about OneWebDay plans. If you’re in New Delhi then, write to us at questions@onewebday.org so that we can let you know where the meeting is.

We just heard from someone in San Antonio, Texas, USA. And we know there’s something going on in Tunisia. Lots of other places. So if you’ve got a plan, or even a plan to have a plan, let us know on the OneWebDay wiki.

If you’re coming here from an ISOC chapter, hello! (and hello even if you’re not.)

We’re hoping to involve even more ISOC chapters this year in OneWebDay. (We know the Web is not the Internet. But we thought “web” sounded more human and had some useful connotations.)

If you’d like to get involved, you can start planning a local celebration in your town. Find a couple of more people and start brainstorming!

You can :

Register as a volunteer at
http://www.onewebday.org/2005/12/volunteer/

Add details of your plans to the OWD wiki:

http://www.onewebday.org/wiki/

Network with other planners/celebrants via

http://onewebday2007.ning.com/

Subscribe to the RSS feed on
http://www.onewebday.org/feed/

But do get involved somehow.

The 2008 World Economic Forum is starting up.

Reuters is conducting a series of interviews with Tim O’Reilly, Robert Scoble, Mitch Kapor, and Philip Rosedale – all in Second Life.

To watch/listen in, read this article.

We’re not saying, here at OneWebDay, that this is anything special – Second Life gets a lot of buzz! – but it is good to see the internet angle at Davos.

You might be interested in participating in a Pew Internet “Future of the Internet” survey. It asks people to think about the Internet’s influence on everything by the year 2020. The survey presents interesting scenarios that are written to get people to react with their opinions about the future. There’s no commitment involved – you can take a few minutes to look at the survey site right now and simply share your views if you’d like. (Your answers will remain anonymous unless you specifically state you want to take credit for them.) If you think the survey is worthwhile, please also share the address with any of your friends who are knowledgeable about the Internet.

http://www.psra.com/experts

If you have trouble with that address, try going to:

http://websurveyor.net/wsb.dll/WSGateway?surveyid=195410

This is the third such survey. To see one way Pew publishes the data, you can see the two earlier studies at the following address:

http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/expertsurveys/default.xhtml

Thanks very much for considering this,

If you’re in Washington, DC on January 30, please come by the OneWebDay booth at the annual State of the Net conference.

Help us work on ways to encourage the 1.2 billion Internet users to think of themselves as responsible for the future of the Internet.

The Internet is us, not just some collection of machines.