Must Read: World of Ends

I don’t say “must read” very often in any context–much less to the diverse read­er­ship of my blog. This time, how­ev­er, I say it. You must read the below web page.

World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else.

Immediately upon read­ing “World of Ends” I real­ized every­one who has a web­site, every­one who does Web design, every­one involved in her com­pa­ny’s use of net­works or the Internet, every­one who surfs, every­one who uses e‑mail, Usenet Newsgroups, or does any­thing what­so­ev­er on the Internet should be required to read to “World of Ends.”

To many, the infor­ma­tion con­tained in this easy to read, humor­ous­ly infor­ma­tive essay is already com­mon knowl­edge. To the vast major­i­ty of the hun­dreds of mil­lions of Internet users, how­ev­er, not all of it is already known or under­stood. And its infor­ma­tion you need to understand.

If it were up to me, I would man­date that every human on the plan­et read and pass a quiz on the mate­r­i­al con­tained with­in “World of Ends” pri­or to being able to access any fea­ture of the Internet by any means. I would make it the open­ing screen to AOL, MSN, and the oth­er online ser­vices that push peo­ple by the thou­sands through their saccarin-coated cur­tains onto the Internet with­out ful­ly prepar­ing indi­vid­u­als to han­dle the Internet. I would hard­code into the chips on modems, routers, and net­work cards a kill switch that does­n’t unlock until the user reads and suc­cess­ful­ly pass­es a quiz on “World of Ends”. I would make IT/IS depart­ments the world over make new employ­ees read and agree to the terms of “World of Ends” simul­ta­ne­ous to the var­i­ous non-disclosure and sys­tem usage con­tracts employ­ees must sign. I would make domain reg­is­trars make the “World of Ends” essay and a pass­ing grade of a sub­se­quent quiz pre­req­ui­sites before reg­is­ter­ing or renew­ing domain names–and all the offi­cers of the enti­ty that owns cor­po­rate domain names would be sub­ject to the require­ment, not just the IT depart­ment reg­is­ter­ing the name. I would increase Apple’s “1–2‑3 and you’re online” process to “1–2‑3–4”. I would make every mem­ber of Congress begin each and every speech or fil­l­a­buster at a hear­ing regard­ing an Internet-related bill begin her recita­tion with an affir­ma­tion of the key points of “World of Ends” and swear under oath her under­stand­ing and com­mit­ment thereto–and repeat the same with each vote on such a bill.

If you’re read­ing this post, it is my opin­ion that you are required to read “World of Ends” and under­stand it.

If you are a blog­ger or oth­er web­site own­er, I urge you to, at the very least, link to “World of Ends”. You should strong­ly encour­age your site’s vis­i­tors to read “World of Ends,” as I have. It might not be a bad idea to even cite “World of Ends” as a require­ment in your site’s Terms of Use.

World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly required read­ing mate­r­i­al for any­one or any age who makes use of the Internet for fun, prof­it, work, avo­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion, or any oth­er pos­si­ble rea­son, using any device or protocol.

Go! Go and read it now!