Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Mass blog
I am on Radio Wales in two hours time talking about the greatest mass “blog” ever. The event is being headed up by a group of charities lead by the National Trust and English Heritage:
The charities, under the umbrella of the History Matters campaign, want to bring together schoolchildren, celebrities and indeed everyone living in the country on Oct 17 to contribute to a unique record of the present which will be an invaluable resource to histrians in the future as they seek a deeper insight into early 21st century life.
The campaign hopes that hundreds of thousands of people will record their experiences that day as a “blog”, short for weblog, or internet diary.
The date was chosen specifically because it is an ordinary Tuesday in autumn and not the anniversary of anything special in the nation’s history.
But by asking people to record their impressions of life in Britain on that day, the charities behind the History Matters campaign are hoping to record a vast snapshot of how the country feels in one 24-hour period day and preserve it forever at the British Library.
All 29,000 schools in Britain will be invited to take part in the project, with a leaflet sent to teachers which has been supported by The Daily Telegraph.
Well-known people supporting the idea include Tony Benn, Bill Bryson, the actors Stephen Fry, Tony Robinson and Derek Jacobi and Nick Barratt, the genealogist behind BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are? programme and this newspaper’s Family Detective.
To take part you need to write a diary of your day and send it as an email to the website here. The result may well resemble some sort of on-line time capsule, which is just as well as I doubt if I will have time to do more than read a mere fraction of it.
The charities, under the umbrella of the History Matters campaign, want to bring together schoolchildren, celebrities and indeed everyone living in the country on Oct 17 to contribute to a unique record of the present which will be an invaluable resource to histrians in the future as they seek a deeper insight into early 21st century life.
The campaign hopes that hundreds of thousands of people will record their experiences that day as a “blog”, short for weblog, or internet diary.
The date was chosen specifically because it is an ordinary Tuesday in autumn and not the anniversary of anything special in the nation’s history.
But by asking people to record their impressions of life in Britain on that day, the charities behind the History Matters campaign are hoping to record a vast snapshot of how the country feels in one 24-hour period day and preserve it forever at the British Library.
All 29,000 schools in Britain will be invited to take part in the project, with a leaflet sent to teachers which has been supported by The Daily Telegraph.
Well-known people supporting the idea include Tony Benn, Bill Bryson, the actors Stephen Fry, Tony Robinson and Derek Jacobi and Nick Barratt, the genealogist behind BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are? programme and this newspaper’s Family Detective.
To take part you need to write a diary of your day and send it as an email to the website here. The result may well resemble some sort of on-line time capsule, which is just as well as I doubt if I will have time to do more than read a mere fraction of it.
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I took part, but it's not really a blog though is it. You can't create links, add images or leave comments - I can't even view my own entry!
Mind you calling it a blog has worked in that it's generated interest I suppose (but still misleading)
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Mind you calling it a blog has worked in that it's generated interest I suppose (but still misleading)
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