fuzzies

This page considers personification of the net.

It covers -

• introduction
• one-ness

It supplements the discussion of internet metaphors and netizens elsewhere on this site.

     introduction

Generations claim new media and artistic genres as particularly their own, entities that somehow identify the generation to itself and other generations, are 'owned' by it and must be 'defended' by it. (The meaning of that identification is, of course, often contested.)

It is thus not very surprising that a theme in the popular culture of advanced economies is 'hands off the internet', with recurrent claims that the Net (distinguished with a capital N) is under attack, is endangered, must be defended.

The nature of that attack is often not very clear. Lack of clarity reflects the role of the net as a screen onto which people project anxieties, angers and aspirations. It is also a reflection of incoherence, with gurus such as George Gilder for example mixing a naive populism (anti-Washington, ant-Wall Street) with a dash of technocracy and more than a dash of faith-based science.

Lack of clarity also exists because the 'cause' is often about belonging, a feelgood fuzziness in which audiences adopt the net in the same way that earlier epochs adopted African Missions (with David Livingstone as a pin-up boy in the place of Vint Cerf or Nicholas Negroponte) or aspired to 'save the whales'.

     one-ness

The net has not escaped the process of collective affirmation and exclusion implicit in national and international memorial days. Advocates of One Web Day for example proclaim -

The mission of OneWebDay is to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life: September 22

The Web is worth celebrating.

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

As with Earth Day - an inspiration and model for OneWebDay - it's up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.

By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly.

The crueller sceptics would presumably ask 'One Telephone Day'? 'One Ink & Paper Day'?

Competitors include One Internet Day and International Internet Day (for "everybody who believes that Internet is life, love, friendship and something precious!"). As of 1999 the latter centred on claims that

Netizens from around the globe are leaving their heart-felt thank-yous to the Net and sharing what it has meant in their life.

Presumably that is less messy than sacrificing goats and chickens, or leaving floral tributes on the grave of Samuel Morse or Alexander Graham Bell as an expression of heart-felt thanks.

Spain's celebration of One Internet Day in 2006 aimed

to launch a message to the society in favour of an intelligent use of the Internet, for the society to be aware of what they can get from the Internet to improve their life quality.

The annual Day for the 'One Internet' has unfortunately been celebrated in different countries in April, May, July, October, November and December.

Celebration is inevitable in a world decorated by National Privacy Week, National Bowling Week, World Intellectual Property Day, Harmony Day and Literacy Day. If we are concerned to celebrate the net and testify to "what it has meant" to our lives, it is curious that Netizens and others do not celebrate Banking Day, Insurance Day, Television Day, Telephone Day, Radiology Day and Antibiotics Day.

Why not Hot Water & Soap Day, basic hygiene being somewhat more important for the advancement of civilisation than Web 2.0 (contrary to nonsense that the net was "the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire")?



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