ManyOne.net

Hello my friend,

Today, the first day of this new year, I am asking you to join and share a new Internet platform and the power it represents with communities around the world. In the right hands, I believe it can catalyze a large ripple effect across our planet.

Why?

1. Because it levels the playing field between those with knowledge and passion and those with money.

2. Because it closes the gap between the middle-man and real-life experts and artists, versus the simple act of publishing "content" on the Internet.

I ask you, this first day of 2009, to present this gift, in behalf of more than 1,000 experts in more than 60 countries (so far), to a community group, a school, a poet, an artist, an activist or to the most important people in your life -- your family.

Share it! Let's shine a light of inspiration needed by so many, now. See how below...

The Future Medium

There is something magical emerging on the Web now. You can see examples of how it can change our world, how it can transform education and how it can inspire generations to come with an online home and permanent record of your life, better than a fake, sponsored and exploited existence on MySpace or FaceBook.

From its infancy, pioneers of the World Wide Web saw a new medium in the making, where potentially anyone, anywhere, anytime could reach out to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It was a medium that could give every document an egalitarian press, where every idea could soar or sink on merit. It was a medium that could break through taboo boundaries and open hardened borders. It was clear that it held the potential to transform virtually every kind of software application from an isolated process that runs on one computer to a distributed process that runs on millions of computers. It was clear that the Internet would one day carry telephone calls, transforming telecommunications both economically and socially. It became clear that the Internet would even replace radio and television broadcasting, radically expanding the "channel spectrum" for news and entertainment, eventually giving anyone with a keyboard, microphone, or video camera their very own broadcasting station.

In the intervening years, much of the promise of the early web has come to fruition. The World Wide Web is now ubiquitous within developed nations (and much of the developing world), and taken for granted as the conduit for information and communication for an ever greater portion of our lives. However, not all of what the Web has become is positive: the promise of everyone having an equal voice and being judged on the merits of what they say has given way to an increasing dominance of large commercial interests. Hand-in-hand with this, the "signal-to-noise" ratio of the Web has deteriorated, making it increasingly difficult to separate valuable, trustworthy information from the "chaff". In addition, the increasing dominance of "short attention theater" entertainment content has eroded the visibility and accessibility of information that expands knowledge among young people and equips citizens to make informed decisions about their future. Despite this (or perhaps, partially as a result of this) the increasingly urgent global problems we face today demand a new kind of information medium dedicated to serve the goals of intellectual development, economic enlightenment, environmental stewardship, technological and social transformation... in essence, a medium that fulfills the original potential of the World Wide Web.

Let's consider a vision of a future Web, and what it may offer to us all. So let us go there, to 2010, just a few years from now, and imagine what might be...

Check out:

http://manyone.net/

Imagine a Web 3.0 medium, distinguished by its *truly* public ownership, where the entire ecosystem within it can help build it, and the best of the builders are actually paid...

Learn about the people backing it:

http://manyone.net/about/

And some of the organizations behind it:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Content_Partners

Join us. Start your own portal, or network of portals. Join for free, or just $8 per month and never see an advertisement anywhere in the entire network. Know that half of all net revenue (not the smaller profit), but net revenue will go back into the ecosystems you join.

Start here and see the beginning of Web 3.0. And see the enclosed if you want the longer, better version of the vision that drives us.

The ManyOne Team.
_______________________
Joseph Firmage