Today is OneWebDay

 

September 22 is OneWebDay. A portion of the press release from OneWebDay's website explains a bit more about the phenomenon:

 

Virtual and In-person Activities Planned Nationwide to Celebrate the Internet and Its Effect on Democratic Participation in this Election Year

 

New York, NY – On the third annual “Earth Day for the Internet”, communities across the country are holding events to learn about and advocate for that marvel of modern infrastructure, the Internet. It happens in the United States and around the world on OneWebDay, Monday, September 22, 2008.

“Earth Day was the model when I founded OneWebDay in 2006,” says Susan Crawford, a professor of law specializing in Internet issues at the University of Michigan. “In 1969, one man asked the people to do what their elected representatives would not: take the future of the environment into their own hands.” By 1972, the United States had a federal agency devoted to protecting the environment, the E.P.A., and today a worldwide citizens’ movement has put the environment front and center politically. According to Crawford, “peoples’ lives now are as dependent on the Internet as they are on the basics like roads, energy supplies and running water. We can no longer take that for granted and we must advocate for the Internet politically, and support its vitality personally.”

The Internet has also become the means by which citizens around the world build movements to hold their elected leaders accountable and support those who represent their interests; it is also increasingly the medium through which citizens interact with their governments. The theme of this year’s OneWebDay is online participation in democracy, coinciding with the U.S. elections.

The online hub for OneWebDay 2008 is www.onewebday.org. There, anyone can: plan or find out about activities in their community; learn ten things individuals can do to support the web; contribute their own stories; read posts from 100 OneWebDay ambassadors; and learn about Internet advocacy groups.

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Events are being held worldwide to celebrate OneWebDay, and are aggregated on their wiki. Examples include submission of text and video stories of how the internet has affected your life in Greensboro, North Carolina and a panel on the wiki-based development of the plan for the city of Melbourne, Australia.

Photo of NYC OneWebDay panel shared by Flickr user (with Larry Lessig speaking) Aaron Uhrmacher, under a Creative Commons license