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How to Use the Web to Transform the World, by Ralph Benko
How to create communities of thousands, even millions, and channel their energy to effect political, social and cultural transformation? This book will tell you how. Get it over there ---->
Advance praise:
Brilliantly and with wit, Ralph Benko provides agitators and
advocacy groups the way to get out our message and to "organize" in the
Web 2.0 world. Couldn't be more timely -- or needed. -- Steve Forbes, President and Chief Executive Officer of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine.
Spinning silica into worldwide webs of glass and light, the
Internet has become a planetary community in need of a global
guidebook. The Websters' Dictionary is it -- a cornucopian resource
for all compendious world-warpers. -- George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty (the Bible of Reaganomics), and the high tech classics Telecosm and Microcosm.
Benko provides the reader with a gentle guide through the
dark forests of political advocacy on the Internet. A must read for
anyone wishing to understand how the Internet is changing politics
forever. -- Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia.org and Wikia.com.
The Websters' Dictionary examines the work of people and groups that reach millions online. In clear and simple terms, it shows you how it's done. Download a free eCopy of the complete work here by taking the Websters' Oath.
This also will sign you up for breaking news of the Web advocacy sector. (You can safely and completely unsubscribe with a click. There's no obligation -- except to use your powers only for Good.) And join the Websters' Bar and Grill, a social network for web-advocates, to hang out with other Websters and get the latest gossip. (No cover charge.)
The Websters' Dictionary lays it out from the basic to the sophisticated. How to get a domain name? What domain name to pick or to avoid? How do you create a great website or select someone to do it for you? How to harness the power of Web 2.0. (In fact, what the heck is Web 2.0?) What style gives you impact? What content works? How much should you spend? What kind of team do you need? It lays out best practices briefly, clearly, picturesquely, and above all accurately.
This is the dawning of the Age of the Internet. Be part of that. Become a Webster -- an activist, an operative, or a wonk who is using the Web to transform the world.
The original contents of this site, and of The Websters' Dictionary, are coprighted and licensed under Creative Commons attribution/non-commercial license. This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon these works non-commercially, and although the new works must also acknowledge the Webster and be non-commercial, you don’t have to license your derivative works on the same terms. For further information on the terms of this license please visit www.creativecommons.org.
You are invited to visit the Websters' Bar & Grill by clicking on the tab in the navigation bar toward the very top of the homepage. It's a friendly place.
Here are the Webster's 10 Laws of how to use the Web to transform the world.
The Webster propounding his 10 Laws? Nope.
Jacques-Louis David’s The Oath of the Tennis Court. 1791.
But the similarities are ... uncanny.
Each of the Webster's Laws is stolen from someone much smarter than the Webster. To justify this appropriation we legitimately could quote from Sir Isaac Newton:
If I have seen farther it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants. [Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676).]
But in reality, this immodesty derives from labor leader John L. Lewis’s famous dictum: He that tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooteth. Without further ado:
1. Pulitzer’s Law: "Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so that they will remember it, and above all accurately so they will be guided by its light."
The very best "mission statement" for the Web, composed an eon ago, still applies.
Joseph Pulitzer
And the Webster's corollary: Give them easy, simple, direct ways by which their voices may be heard and by which they can, individually and in concert, take action.
2. Nast’s Law and (Boss Tweed’s Complaint):
"They can see pictures."
As Boss Tweed famously said, “Stop them damn pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see pictures.”
Boss Tweed
The Webster says: Use compelling graphics.
3. Clarke’s Second Law:
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
Credits: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
The Webster says: The Web is not for the faint of heart. Learn from our predecessors, but try new things and find out what works now.
4. Beecher’s Law: "No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy."
Lyman Beecher
The Webster says: Embrace the controversial. Controversy is golden – interesting, draws attention, drives traffic, and excites the community. But use common decency.
5. Lazarus’s Law: "Unleash the imprisoned lightning."
On the Statue of Liberty is engraved a sonnet by Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles….
photo credit: by Tengis, of replica statue near Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, hosted at Flikr.com
The Webster says: The Web can be our means of unleashing “the imprisoned lightning” of millions whose voices have been exiled and who deserve to be heard.
6. Metcalfe’s Law: "The value of a communication system grows at approximately the square of the number of nodes of the system."
The Webster says: The more people we enroll and connect with one another, the more powerful we become.
7. Bianchini’s law of Viral Loops:
"When your currency is ideas, people become emotionally attached."
"Chen calls a viral loop the 'most advanced direct-marketing strategy being developed in the world right now.' *** [I]f you create something people really want, need, or merely enjoy, then your customers will grow your business for you. Users, just by using a product, are, in essence, offering a testimonial 'When your currency is ideas, people become emotionally attached,' Ning's Bianchini says. 'Then you become a public utility like Blogger, YouTube, or Facebook.'" (Emphasis supplied.) Source: FastCompany.com
photo credit: http://spiral.gallery.sytes.org/
The Webster says: Offer something people really want, need or enjoy.
8. Trippi’s Law:
If you pay attention to the community you’re building, then the community will step up and do the work."
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chatiryworld.
The Webster says: The essence of the modern Web – and of developing the power to transform the world – resides in building community rather than broadcasting information.
9. Pariser’s Law:
"This is not about us, it’s about you."
Hogarth: Chairing the Members (from The Original Works of William Hogarth. London: John & Josiah Boydell, 1790)
The Webster says: If you are all about serving your community with passion you will succeed.
10. Cage’s Law:
"Begin anywhere."
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/extranoise/169187125/
The Webster says: It can appear daunting, the Webster knows. But just listen to John Cage, the greatest experimental composer of the 20th Century – and a profound philosopher – and begin. You will discover what you need as you go.
There. That's the Webster's 10 Laws. Like them? Download (and freely share) the free, complete, eBook version of TheWebstersDictionary.com starting September 24, 2008. Or the day after. Or whenever. It'll be there when you need it.
Or buy the hardcover or trade paperback when it releases in October, here, at Amazon or BN.com, or in finer bookstores in what was once "the real world."
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Annotate. Give as Christmas gift.
 Find working with the Web as an advocacy or policy tool a source of bewilderment? Get The Websters' Dictionary for the straight story, subscribe to the free 2.0 411 for breaking news and features. And register at the Websters' Bar and Grill above to join a private social network to meet peers, experts and friends, to share expertise, opinions and sector gossip.
-- The Webster
Web and Web Advocacy Developments:
From Vin Crosbie's A Primer: Web 1, 2, and 3 at Clickz:
Thus, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium since about 2000 have been spearheading development of Web 3.
A simple way of understanding Web 3 is that if you're planning to
travel somewhere, you needn't visit a travel site, a map site,
restaurant review sites, shopping sites, social media itinerary site,
and so on to find out how to get there, where to stay, where your
appointments are located, and where to eat and shop and to know if any
of your friends will coincidentally be traveling there, too. Instead,
you'd type or tell your computer or handheld device where you're going
and it would do all those things for you, then display the results.
Imagine something similar to your Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, or My
Yahoo pages that delivers to you everything your friends are doing, the
news about the topics you care about, competitive information about
products or services you want to buy, and everything else you might
want from the Internet without the constraints, control, adware, or
spyware of Facebook, MySpace, Google, or Yahoo. Rather than you surfing
the Web (which you could still choose to do), the Web serves you.
Web 3 requires technologies such as XML, metadata markup, and Web
ontology languages, things as arcane to mere mortals as HTML and CSS
were a decade ago, but nothing insurmountable. Some IT people dismiss
Web 3 as too complex ever to be implemented -- which is, of course,
what they said about Web 1 between 1989 and 1992.
NOT from Crosbie, an assemblage:
Race to Web 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0?
Top candidates:
Are iPhone and Android-based palmtops/cellphones, pushing easy web browsing from the desk and the lap to the hand Web 3.0?
Which would push the Semantic Web (if finally on the horizon) to 4.0....
Is the Semantic Web finally here? Yes, according to a press release by Cognition Technologies as reported by Paul Miller in September 2008 at zdnet:
Los Angeles-based Cognition Technologies today announced availability of their Semantic Map to the English language.
According to Cognition’s press release,
“[their] Semantic Map provides software applications with an ‘understanding’ of more than four million semantic contexts”
The press release continues, somewhat opaquely, to expand those ’semantic contexts’;
“It encompasses over 536,000 word senses (word and phrase meanings);
75,000 concept classes (or synonym classes of word meanings); 7,500
nodes in the technology’s ontology or classification
scheme; and 506,000 word stems (roots of words) for the English language.”
Cognition CEO, Scott Jarus, commented;
“Cognition’s extensive Semantic Map is a critical component for the
next phase of the Web’s evolution, a.k.a. the Semantic Web, or Web 3.0.
It gives the computer a depth of knowledge and understanding of
language far beyond the current keyword and pattern-matching
technologies in place.”
But perhaps the infallibly interesting and prescient Esther Dyson's tap on the shoulder of user-managed-metadata means that this evolution will be here sooner than anticipated -- likely much sooner than the Semantic Web, constituting 4.0.
Pushing the HAL 9000-like Semantic Web back to 5.0...
Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that.
Delay possibly not a Bad Thing, until they get all the bugs worked out....
Gmail just made it easy for you to make it hard for people to hack your gmail account. Turn on the new encryption mode. Go to the top right of your gmail page, click on settings. Go to the bottom of your settings page and where it says "browser connection" click on "always use https." Webmonkey tells you why. It's fast, easy, free (expensive for Google, free for you). So just do it.
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The Websters' 411
To get the free and complete eBook version of The Websters' Dictionary just take The Webster's Oath -- I WILL USE MY POWERS ONLY FOR GOOD -- by typing in your name and email address here. It will also enroll you for the free Websters 411 email on breaking Web advocacy news -- and you can safely and completely unsubscribe with a click at any time -- and keep the Dictionary.
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