OneWebDay

Google has introduced a new tool – Google Sites - where even the most technically inept can easily create a snazzy looking website in just a few clicks. It’s also possible to restrict who can see the site, making it highly suitable for classroom projects.

“OneWebDay in a box” is a frequent idea we hear, and we’re all for it. Write it up! Send it around!

What would be in the box? Well, brainstorming seeds, practical hints for good works on OneWebDay, and a form letter ready for sending to a legislator requesting that OneWebDay be recognized as an official day on September 22.

Also in the box could be – easy teaching tools for web skills, adaptable for all ages; the identity and contact information for someone in a different country who wants to collaborate with you; some designs for handouts/buttons/t-shirts that could be ready for the day…

What’s in your OneWebDay box?

February 26 1991 – WorldWideWeb, the world’s first web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor, was introduced by British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.  Berners-Lee had come up with the idea in 1989, and the the Web first became publicly available in  August 1991, but the February date marks the first successful server/browser combination using the http protocol. WorldWideWeb was later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web.

More info: Wikipedia

Hello, world. It’s been ten years now – a bit more – since the beginning of broad availability of the internet to the rest of us. (A timeline setting forth the history of the World Wide Web is here: http://www.w3.org/History.html

There are huge differences in connectivity around the world. About a tenth of one percent of Africans have highspeed access. Depending on how you count, about 60% or more of US citizens have highspeed access. Asia has the most internet users in the world, by far.

In total, there are 1.3 billion people online, give or take a few hundred million. But we’re still at the beginning, and there are many threats to internet access around the world. Let’s protect and defend the ability of everyone to be online, connecting to an open internet.

Welcome to OneWebDay!

OneWebDay is now yours. It’s our gift to you. We hope you’ll use it well.

The idea is to use the day, September 22, to reflect on how the Internet has changed the world and how you’d like it to change the world in the future.

It’s a day to do good works (connect more people, teach them how) and consider activism (what government policies would you like to change or initiate?). It’s a day to do these things visibly, in public, so that we get a visual sense that people care about the future of the Internet and are willing to expend some energy to have an effect on it.

The Internet is not unchangeable – we shouldn’t take it for granted – and there are many forces around the world that want to constrain the change and growth that the Internet makes possible. The purpose of OneWebDay is to focus attention and interest on these issues around the globe.

It’s yours. We’re not trying to control it or dictate what you should do on that day. We are, though, hoping that you’ll dream up a project or a plan that is constructive, visual, and engaging for other people around you. Try the wiki for planning, or the social network site above. It’s yours.

We had an incredible time in New Delhi with the ISOC chapter there, and with students from the New Delhi law school. Lots of buttons and stickers and handouts left in India – OWD is hoping there will be quite a turnout.

This week, we’re on to New York City. The OWD brainstorming meeting is at Google NYC at 7pm on Thursday. If you’d like to attend, join the meetup.com OneWebDay group for NYC to RSVP.

It’s a good time to hold your own brainstorming meeting. Get together with friends to talk about the most important thing you could do to protect the Internet on OWD. Maybe it’s connectivity, maybe it’s training – try out some ideas. And have snacks.

ISOC is sponsoring a meeting for chapters this evening (Wednesday) in New Delhi – and OneWebDay is on the agenda.

Meeting details are here.

This is very exciting – if you’re in New Delhi please come.

Here’s a link to the Internet Governance Forum site — http://www.intgovforum.org/.

There’s a planning meeting coming up this month in Geneva, and a large meeting at the end of the year in New Delhi.

The mandate of the IGF is:

1. Discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet;

2. Facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet and discuss issues that do not fall within the scope of any existing body;

3. Interface with appropriate inter-governmental organisations and other institutions on matters under their purview;

4. Facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, and in this regard make full use of the expertise of the academic, scientific and technical communities;

5. Advise all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of the Internet in the developing world;

6. Strengthen and enhance the engagement of stakeholders in existing and/or future Internet governance mechanisms, particularly those from developing countries;

7. Identify emerging issues, bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the general public, and, where appropriate, make recommendations;

8. Contribute to capacity building for Internet governance in developing countries, drawing fully on local sources of knowledge and expertise;

9. Promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes;

10. Discuss, inter alia, issues relating to critical Internet resources;

11. Help to find solutions to the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet, of particular concern to everyday users;

12. Publish its proceedings.

This is a little tricky to follow, but we here at OneWebDay wanted you to know about it.

We here at OneWebDay are enamored of the nonpartisan TechPresident site.

There’s an element on that front page that you really should watch – it shows how many Facebook and MySpace friends the candidates have.

And, more seriously, the site is paying attention to the way in which internet use is changing the political scene in the U.S. Very OneWebDay.

The severing (or dissolution?) of several undersea cables between the West and the East has had a deep effect on internet access in Egypt, India, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, India, and many other countries. No one seems to know, definitively, what’s causing all this cable breakage.

The International Herald Tribune is reporting that “chokepoints” for internet traffic – off the coasts of Egypt and Singapore – have been affected.

These incidents remind us how connected we are, and yet how fragile the physical connections can be. Redundant cabling is hugely expensive, but hugely necessary.