OneWebDay

Our 16th ambassador is Brown University student Zack McCune, who’s spending the summer at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Zack is running an individual experiment in internet deprivation (original post here). We’ll get the final report on Tuesday.

I feel a bit like I am going on a hunger strike. Not to be melodramatic, but spontaneously giving up the internet for a day feels a lot like Lenten fasting, a time to focus on dependency by voluntarily giving up something you love. Not to be religious, although for me, a self-acknowledged “digitalist” who may or may not believe there is divinity in digital data, the internet is something of a gospel, and without it, I fear, I may be hopelessly lost.

Let me back-up for a moment and set the scene. My name is Zachary McCune. I am a student. In particular, I study Modern Culture & Media at Brown University, which generally serves as a sort of carte blanche to investigate anything from the theory of the sign to the sign of the theory. My preference, of course, is to examine what I consider the most rapid, seismic, revolution of culture in human history, the emergence of digital technology. Out of sheer luck, I was offered a summer position at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (at Harvard University, dontchaknow), and here I sit, and on a macbook at a mahogany desk in Cambridge, Mass. musing on things coded into creation.

I was recently asked to help celebrate “One Web Day” an event I admit I had never heard of. So I googled it, naturally, and discovered that it was roughly “earth day for the internet,” an opportunity to celebrate what the world wide web means to humanity. How could I not be tickled pink? Much of my waking life is guided by the faint glow of the internet, and when not actively “participating” in web culture, I am often studying its dynamics like an anthropologist (a la danah boyd) who can never fully disengaged from the culture s/he studies.

But how might I celebrate such an expansive, and therefore abstracted “thing” like the internet? I could elect to glorify a set space, an individual website, community, trend, activity or use for the internet, or perhaps I could make a weblog of the web, a meta manifesto to all things wonderful about the internet on the internet for the internet. A fine way to celebrate the web indeed. Even considering these two broadstrokes option led me to a larger question: what is that the internet means to me? Or conversely, what would I do without the internet?

I didn’t know.

And I didn’t know if I wanted to know.

Sure there have been times when I wasn’t online, whole blocks of time when I might be camping or traveling or on a boat, unable to access the web around me. But these times were exceptions to my considerations in that I had prepared for them. Moreover, they were often part of situations where using the internet was neither necessary nor practical.

I decided to give up the internet, perhaps for a couple hours. But that didn’t seem all that meaningful. No, I decided it would have to be an entire day, to match the 24 hours of “One Web Day.” I considered the weekend. No, it would be far more crippling (and therefore fascinating) if I picked a weekday, a workday to be precise, provided my employers thought this was fair, and that I continue doing my job, just in slightly altered conditions. Fortunately, I have some of the coolest employers on Earth (did I mention them, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University?). They thought I was crazy; they understood my sacrifice.

They also knew the dice were loaded because it is the Berkman for Internet & Society, after all.

I admit I am a little apprehensive. What will I miss? What communications will fail? To pre-prompt true emergencies, I have provided an auto reply to my email that gives out my phone number and the nature of my experiment. I hope it will not offend people, as I debated for some time about whether or not it was appropriate, but safety wins out.

I also have debated about how to document the experience. I wish I could tell you to follow me live on twitter or facebook or youtube or on my webcast, but that’s kinda the point, what do you do without those services? I will be taking notes on my continued webless day, including a log of sites I would visit, queries I would search and the number of times I yearn to check my email. I will note alternatives I develop to problems I usually solve with the web (you know like, reading the newspaper for “news”). When I complete the 24 hours, all of this content will be uploaded.

I thank you for patience my silly social experiment.

ttyl, I’ll brb.

Our 15th ambassador, Jon Newton, interviewed OneWebDay founder Susan Crawford for p2p news site p2pnet.net. You can read the post in its original context here.

Running p2pnet can be very satisfying and one of the nicest emails I’ve had this year came from Susan Crawford.

Wikipedia describes her as a, “prominent media internet legal scholar and professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law” and p2pnet has been fortunate enough to carry a number of her posts.

She’s famous on- and offline, “for her pithy, lucid and very much to-the-point views on Net events of many different flavours,” we posted in 2005, but more recently, she’s become famous internationally as one of the main movers behind OneWebDay, a now-annual event.

“Will you be a OneWebDay Ambassador?” – she asked me a little while ago.

No worries. It’s an honour and a privilege.

So what exactly is OneWebDay? It’s a wonderful way to focus on the Net as the world’s most powerful means of communication.

But there are forces which would would like to subjugate it, bringing it under their total and exclusive control.

Not if Crawford and the people supporting her and the OneWebDay movement can help it.

“Every September 22 is an Earth Day for the internet,” she explains.

“It’s a day to celebrate, educate, and activate – do good works and raise consciousness about the threats to the internet around the world.”

For the 100 days before OneWebDay, “we will be anointing/calling on 100 OWD ambassadors to each take one day to talk to their community about their values – and how those values tie to OneWebDay’s 2008 theme of participatory democracy,” says the OWD Ambassador site, going on:

“The idea is for the ambassadors to introduce new people to OneWebDay, while we in turn introduce them to the wider OneWebDay family.”

In a short Q&A, “What inspired you to come up with it?” – I asked Crawford >>>

Susan Crawford: It seemed to me that we were at risk of taking the internet for granted. Meanwhile, many different forms of pre-internet businesses (including law enforcement, Hollywood studios, and telephone companies, just to name a few) were waking up and arguing (and acting) as if they should be in control of internet communications. Most people who use the internet don’t understand that it’s not the same as a telephone network. I thought we needed to make these issues visible, and make the people who care about the future of the internet visible to one another. I didn’t do this alone – a lot of people have gotten involved over the years. This is the third OneWebDay.

p2pnet: Is there any one thing above all others you hope it’ll achieve in 2008?

Susan Crawford: I’d like to see more involvement by people in developing countries. Connectivity and censorship are major issues, and I’m hoping the word will spread beyond the developed world both online and through groups like the Internet Society. A top priority is involving schools and kids.

p2pnet: And is there any one thing you’d ask people to do to make it a success?

Susan Crawford: I’d like to see people getting involved by going to http://www.onewebday.org/base/index.php/OneWebDay_in_a_box and hosting meetings to talk about internet issues in their homes or classrooms. Lots of tiny events like these, particularly involving young people, will help awareness grow around the world.

p2pnet: Censorship in many and varied forms is increasing as large corporations and self-serving administrations strive to gain control of how the Web is used, and by whom. What can OneWebDay do to help stop this?

Susan Crawford: We make progress when we make things visible. Earth Day, for example, didn’t take off until we saw a picture of the earth from space – a fragile blue marble in a black void. We can’t *see* the threats to online communication in our day-to-day lives – OneWebDay can help make specific control problems visible, and raise consciousness about the power of network operators in many countries to constrain internet access.

p2pnet: With this in mind, what role can OneWebDay have in the Net Neutrality battle?

Susan Crawford: OneWebDay is a platform for use by anyone. It’s yours. It can be used to raise awareness about the risks to the open internet – press conferences, rock concerts, teach-ins, anything. To the extent that groups want to use OneWebDay for activism about Net Neutrality (which is no longer just a US issue) the day can provide a useful focus for these efforts – useful for press coverage.

p2pnet: Blogs are only now really coming into their own. How important are they to the growth of the Net as the principal communications vehicle of the twenty first digital century, and in OneWebDay as a manifestation of that?

Susan Crawford: The big idea is “up” – uploading our own stuff online. Blogs, video sites, photography – there’s an explosion of user-generated content online. Part of the goal of OneWebDay is to encourage everyone to leave a bit of themselves online. Although the internet seems to be a collection of machines, it’s actually a deeply-human network, optimized for human communication. Let’s not take that for granted- it’s not a broadcast network.

p2pnet: OneWebDay is a massive undertaking with scores of famous people such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the web, involved in it, and promoting it. Given that, how important are ordinary people to it, and what can they do to get involved themselves?

Susan Crawford: We’re all ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. One of the great things about the Net is how it empowers all of us to communicate freely. Everyone is important to OneWebDay. To get involved, go to OneWebDay.org and click on “40 Ways to Celebrate OneWebDay”. The theme this year is online participatory democracy – so here’s an idea – send an email to the mayor and ask him/her to proclaim OneWebDay in your city.

p2pnet: Can children also play a part?

Susan Crawford: Absolutely – children are key to OneWebDay. Something like telling a story online, or creating a class wiki – labeling these things OneWebDay and telling us about them – these would be great OWD events. Try to imagine what the world would be like without the internet.

Would you like to be a OWD ambassador? Or do you know someone you believe should be included? Email volunteer@onewebday.org

Stay tuned.

Thanks to Britt Bravo, our 14th ambassador, for posting about OWD at netsquared.org. Here’s an excerpt:

There are so many ways that the Web has made the world a better place. When you look through all of the amazing mashup projects that were submitted this year, and all of the NetSquared Innovation Award proposals from last year, it’s clear to me that one of the things the Web inspires is creativity.

So, web innovators, what creative ideas do you have for how we, the NetSquared Community, can celebrate OneWebDay? The OneWebDay Wiki has a list of physical and virtual spaces where people will be celebrating OneWebDay on September 22nd. What kind of NetSquared event(s) should we add to it?

Our 13th Ambassador, Brooklyn-based writer Dan Lavoie, blogs about “politics, rhetoric and how dumb ideas get sold to smart people” at www.yourenojackkennedy.com.

Do we have the power? Do we have the strength? Do we have the fortitude to ignore the digital divide? I sure as hell hope so.

In honor of the run-up to OneWebDay — a global celebration of online life on Sept. 22 — I say we must be able to blind ourselves the dramatic disparities in online access and usage by income and race. Join with me in the name of willful ignorance!!!

For years, some of the nation’s most well-meaning and socially responsible innovators have been searching for a way to bridge the digital divide. There has been some progress since 2000, though the results are decidedly mixed, according to an exhaustive report by the Public Policy Institute of California last year.

Percent of adults who use the Internet
________________2000________2007
White……………………….70………………83
Black……………………….60………………75
Latino………………………47………………51
Asian……………………….84………………..89
Under $40,000………….47………………..51
$40k-80k………………….76……………….83
More than $80k…………89……………….95
Born in US……………….69………………..82
Naturalized……………….61……………….68
Not a Citizen…………….34………………..41
No college………………..40……………….49
Some college……………70………………..81
College grad…………….82………………..91

Still, the digitial divide has become as much a psychological obstacle as a tangible one. I have sat in on dozens of meetings of poverty advocates that begin with a flood of amazing ideas for using Web 2.0 technology to mobilize and inform low-income communities and communities of color. Facebook groups for to promote affordable housing policy. Google map applications to track health concerns in low-income neighborhoods. YouTube contests for youth of color to tell their stories.

Then, from somewhere in the room, someone will pipe up with, “Well, what about the digital divide? Many of the people we want to reach don’t have or use the Internet. Lets think more tactile and leave this web stuff behind.”

Yes, not everyone in these targeted communities will be reached by web-only outreach. But even in the sky-is-falling digital divide studies released in recent years, a MAJORITY of nearly every demographic permutation — even very poor people of color — are online. To ignore the mobilizing power and reach of Web 2.0 technology is a major mistake — a missed opportunity in the name of phony inclusion.

Web 2.0 (and beyond) has been proven to be a tremendous force for democracy and political advocacy. Sadly, a lack of imagination on the part of too many US advocates has prevented that power from being unleashed where it could do the most good — in low-income communities and communities of color.

Hopefully, OneWebDay will help spread this vision of the active, advocative web right here in the States to the on-the-ground forces who need it most. And if you’ve seen Web 2.0 technology put to good use in mobilizing low-income communities, please let me know. I’d love to be able to highlight some folks doing good work!

Thanks to PEP-NET for introducing OWD to its members. Here’s some information about this exciting new initiative:

“PEP-NET will be a European network of all stakeholders active in the field of eParticipation. PEP-NET therefore already includes public bodies, solution providers and citizen organizations as well as researchers and scientists. The network is open to all organizations willing and actively trying to advance the idea and use of eParticipation in Europe.”

You can view their blog post here.

A big thank you to our 11th Ambassador, Craig Newmark, founder of the indispensable Craigslist, for spreading the word about OWD. You can see his original post here.

Hey, OneWebDay is a big deal.

It’s an Earth Day for the Internet that happens each September 22. The Net allows people of good will everywhere to get together to make things better. For example, it is becoming an effective means of making local government more responsive. OneWebDay’s theme this year is participatory democracy, and I hope to use OneWebDay as an opportunity to speak out about the power of the Net to help all of us expand our involvement in day-to-day democracy. The success of the Obama campaign is just one indication of what we can do together online – eventually, getting government to work better, be accountable, and restore rule of law.

I’m planning on getting to Washington Square in New York City at noon on Sept. 22, and so will Larry Lessig. We’ll be part of a network of OneWebDay events across the U.S. and around the globe.

Our tenth ambassador is Gerrit Hall from Audience of Two. Below is a large excerpt of a post from his blog. You can read the entire post, including images, here.

Mark your calendars for OneWebDay (Sept. 22nd), a holiday celebrating the internet and organize localized activism on its behalf. The folks organizing the invited me to write a blog entry as part of a blogger parade leading up to the event.

The internets are still in their infancy, and they’re going to undergo major changes over our lifetime. As it changes, activists are hoping it will remain “free.” But nobody agrees on the definition of free. The geek community believe keeping the net free requires government enforcement of the principles of net neutrality, which I tried and failed to 2log about previously. Some libertarian types believe that keeping the internet unregulated and subject to the whim of free markets is the definition of free. (For the record, I fall somewhere in the middle.)

The important takeaway from this is that the internet is a highly personalized experience. Each person’s definition of the internet is shaped by the specific way he or she uses it. It can be used to read, write, or ‘rithmetic. It’s become a powerful channel wherein it becomes all things to all people. To me, a free internet is the one which most efficiently provides the most people with the experience they seek.

My use of the internet is probably different from 99% of the other internet users. My experience with the internet most closely resembles that of a gearhead. I like looking under the hood. I like understanding how it works on the packet level. I like tinkering. I like finding the hiccups and building tools to fix them. I like building things from scratch (spam filters, blog software, assorted web gizmos) when perfectly good solutions already exist. I like creating a fully independent island within the ever-fluctuating sea of the hypertubes.

Running a small, independent web server as a hobbyist, my freedom on the net is probably the most threatened by upcoming changes to the internet. Increasingly, the amount of work necessary to run a website is more than a single hobbyist can handle. SEO, fighting spam, backend maintenance, data analytics, and performance optimization are just a handful of the challenges I wrestle with. More crop up daily. Increasing governmental regulation threatens to dump legal liability onto my plate. If AT&T gets its way, I’ll likely have to pay extra money to connect my machine to the information superhighway. The hobbyist like me will eventually drown, and my experience with the internet may eventually become impossible.

Can this experience be preserved? Maybe. Can the open nature of the web allow me to share my experience of how I’ve taken advantage of the open nature of the web? Yes.

Thanks to our ninth ambassador, Howard Wolinsky, for sharing OneWebDay with the Skype community. Skype lets you talk to anyone on the internet for free (and make international phone calls for exceptionally low prices). The open architecture of the web makes it all possible.

Why not call a friend on Skype and tell them about OneWebDay?

Thanks (or should I say “tak”?) to ambassador number eight, Morten Kamper of FDIH for spreading the word about OneWebDay in Denmark. We’re committed to making OneWebDay a truly global celebration, and Morten has brought us one step closer.

Thanks to today’s ambassador David Weinberger, who tweeted and blogged and spread the word about OWD. From his post:

Someone asked me the other day if I still think the Web has not been hyped enough. Damn straight. This thing is bigger than all of us put together. We’ve only just begun to figure out how to take advantage of our new connectedness of ideas and people. It’s worth a little celebrating, don’t you think?

You can read the full post here.