jarango

OneWebDay

Wow, what a great idea: a day devoted to celebrating the web, modeled after earth day.

I remember the first time I saw the web, about 12 years ago. There’d been articles in the new magazines about this amazing web thing that was happening in the US, and I was incredibly anxious to get into it. I’d seen the Internet at the university, but only email and Gopher; this web thing seemed to be a completely different ballgame. Much more intuitive. Graphical. Interactive, in a way that far surpassed the other Internet services. And, most important: democratic—I could not only navigate it; I could easily be a player too.

When I finally sat in front of a web browser and started navigating “for real” (as opposed to fantasizing about it in the glossies) everything around me—my day-to-day life, my professional ambitions, my relationship with other people—got sucked into a strange white light, a limbo where nothing else mattered except my brain, my eyes, the screen before me, and the telephone line that was now connecting me to millions of people far, far away. It was immanence. I remember thinking: “this is what other people would refer to as a religious experience”. And also: “this is how the first person who saw a book felt”.

I was sure of one thing: this thing was completely new; I hadn’t seen or experienced anything like it before. It was the library of Babel, a university, a crowded convention hall. It was a game parlor, it was saucy and wild, it was a trip back to my childhood. And it was in my room.

It was the summation of all that I felt was important, and I knew my life was forever changed. On the spot I decided to give up my career as an architect (“brick and mortar”) to devote my professional life to this medium. That first day I surfed the web for about 48 hours straight, leaving the computer to take care of basic meatspace needs.

I’ve never looked back.

So thank you to Tim Berners-Lee and all the other people responsible for creating the web. Let’s remember what it was like before the web existed; let us not take it for granted. And above all, let’s do our part to make sure that our little corners of the web add value, beauty, and intelligence to the world.