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.

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

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."

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."

source: A Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community: The Wiki and the Blog, by D. Calvin Andrus, Center for the Study of Intelligence vol 49. no. 3, CIA.  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=755904

A single telephone or a single fax machine has no communication value. Two phones have a little value.  A thousand phones have real value. A hundred thousand has great value.  A million or more, extraordinary value. 

The Webster says: The more people we enroll and connect with one another, the more powerful we become.  

"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."