Declaration of A Connected Society 0.1

Two score and one years ago, computer engineers brought forth a new electronic world conceived in connection, dedicated to the proposition that all people are social.  Now we are engaged in social wars on the internet, testing whether the global community, or any community, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

 When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to renew the social bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and our gods entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to a sustainable, vibrant society.

 We the people of the internet, in order to form more perfect communities, wish to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common good, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and promote this credo to help enhance society online and in real life.

 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their online presence with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are connectedness, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, communities are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the community, That whenever any community becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to engage and to self-expression, and to institute new communities, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. prudence, indeed, will dictate that communities long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism or in the face of unresponsive communities, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such institutions, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 We have come to dedicate a portion of life online, as a starting point for those who engage online that that electronic world might live and thrive. But, we can not dedicate this ground alone, for no one is an island, entire of itself, either online or in real life. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Connectedness through community is the wing wherewith we fly to grace. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work thus far so nobly advanced.

 It is therefore for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from both the real and electronic worlds we take increased devotion to that this world, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that communities of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.