Recreating the '60s—online

October 16, 2007 | 1 Comments

It’s true. I’ve been guilty of making the comparison in the past that the ’00s are like the ’60s — a comparison that at times has been met with some amount of ridicule as I was never really there (thanks, Lydon).

But there are a lot of similarities that still call out to me. In the 60s we were fighting communists in Vietnam; today we’re fighting terrorists in Iraq. Back then, major strides were made for American civil liberties, particularly in the realm of feminism and gay rights; today that torch is still being carried, but more so for gay civil liberties like marriage and the right to serve. Also in the 60s was the popular rise against “the establishment” and protests for the masses to voice their opinions against the government. Today, those voices have moved off the streets and on to websites, and the establishment is no longer just the government, but also the corporations that govern our daily lives. Online distribution platforms like blogs and videos have helped to elevate the attention of many political issues, including the recent struggles of Burmese monks in China.

One of the ideas I came up with while working with Technorati earlier this year utilized tagging as a platform to aggregate the masses. My idea was to have a Blog-in, a day where everyone in the world could blog on any topic or subject, so long as they tagged it with the same tag. The idea was to create an online phenomenon so massive that it would garner media attention somewhat like the Human Be-Ins of the 60s, but only online.

Well, it’s sad to say that my idea eventually got cut out of the final plan, but I’m happy to note that someone else eventually came up with a similar idea: The United Nations. As it turns out, on October 15, 2007, the UN planned a global “Blog Action Day” which they announced two months ago on August 15th.

It’s interesting to see what tactics the UN used because they were very successful. Rather than allow bloggers to write about anything, they narrowed down on a topic. For 2007, that topic was the environment. They also relied on bloggers signing up to count numbers rather than using tags to aggregate the masses. It’s also interesting to see that the event was billed as a fundraiser as bloggers could also donate their profits for the day to a charity. Most intriguing is the amount of participation they garnered from the community. With their press release out only two months before the assigned Blog Action Day, they managed to drum up nearly 20,000 subscribed bloggers pledging to blog about the environment or donate their day’s profits.

It’s hard to say just how many people did wind up donating or blogging about the environment. A small amount of research reveals that not everyone did wind up posting, but a Google Search as of October 16 reports about 75 news stories and nearly 3 million websites, so the impact has been significant. Significant enough to amount to the large scale social action of the 60s? Perhaps, but I’ll leave that up to the eye of the blogger.

Peace out, man.

Jeff

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