A planet where everyone has a website

Can you imagine a planet where every single person on the globe has their own personal website? I can. I’ve been there. It’s called Ruferius and it revolves around one of the stars in the Sirius ‘Dog Star’ system. It’s not like people are exceptionally intelligent or evolved on Ruferius, the thing is it’s illegal to not have your own website. You see, Ruferians have a strong social ideology based around the idea that no single person should ever be forgotten. Nobody is allowed to fall through the cracks. On Ruferius, they have a very similar motto to that of a small town in the southeast part of the United States of America, a place you wouldn’t have heard of, and probably will never even drive through, a place called Snellville, Georgia. Snellville’s town moniker is, ‘Snellville, where everybody’s somebody.’ Well on Ruferius, they take this idea to the next level, and then some.

From the day you are born your parents and ancestors start out your site. General information about where you come from, who you are related to, and your infant habits are related to the rest of the wider community who religiously stay informed about their fellow species. People want and need to know about each other. If you need a house painter, you already know all about the local tradespeople in your area, and importantly, which ones you either have a personal connection with, or suit your particular interior design tastes. It’s the same for doctors, lawyers, and schoolteachers.

After you reach a certain age children start to add more and change pages to their site. That’s where a strange kind of beauty comes into the picture. People only know what you tell them of yourself. Oh, you can lie and make out to be someone you’re not, but the community is so well connected that as soon as anything facetious is written, others are blogging and commenting on each other’s sites informing each other of this possible corruption of the truth. In the end, your site becomes a reflection of you, a place where family, friends, and the wider community can learn about what makes you tick as an individual. Whenever you meet anyone on your daily or even holiday travels you can later go into your laptop or palm computer and learn all about them. Then the personal connections start to evolve.

Say you’re at a party one day and you meet someone that you are very attracted to, but who you only get a brief chance to talk with as they have prior engagements that they must attend to. As long as you caught their name you can go online and learn all about what kind of person they are. You might find you have similar interests, or that your first impression was totally off the mark. If their character profile does seem interesting to your personality, you can then send them a message straight to their email reminding them of your meeting, and urge them to meet you again.

The amount of information that you choose to share about yourself is totally up to you. You may want to put up photos, a written journal (blog), your favourite music files, favourite Internet links, and even videos about your life. Videoblogs take this to the next level where Ruferians talk to their world via video files. Did I forget to mention podcasting? Talk to your friends or just talk to the world and people can get a sonic glimpse of your personal point of view.

Besides the mandatory personal websites, people revolving around the Dog Star are encouraged to have multiple sites for different purposes. As they are a very entrepreneurial planet, the main type of web site that people voluntarily take part in are ones relating to business, although on Ruferius they call business ‘sharingness’. This is because of their strongly held belief that all actions done to better the self should also better the masses. Work is seen as an opportunity to help the world, as well as putting food on the table and a roof over your head. The concept is that if you share your talents and knowledge with others, we’ll get all the necessary jobs done, working together for each other, hence the word, ‘sharingness’.

If you’ve got an idea or skill that you feel could benefit society you make a website for it. Then when others search for keywords related to any specific subject, say skydiving (What are the benefits of skydiving?) your site with your skydiving company will be listed for people to check out. If your price is right and your site has a personable ambience about it, you can bet that soon all the adrenalin junkies in the near vicinity will be making bookings to jump from your plane.

If you’re a lonely soul who spends much of your time focussed on your hobby of painting miniature airplanes, you create a website based around your love and soon after you’ve got other airplane buffs to talk to, meet up with, or even become friends with. This is why there aren’t any lonely people on Ruferius. There’s always someone else out there who is interested in what you like, no matter how rare your interest is. Gee, on Ruferius there’s even a website dedicated to people who paint their pets’ toe nails. It gets hundreds of page views, people chat in the forums thus forming a mini-community, and ‘sharingness’ ads are displayed for people’s products related to the site’s main subject (like purple hamster #9 sparkle polish). Having the ads displayed on the site means that the site owner can even make a few energy credits (that’s what they call money) so that they can get a few more things done, one of which is to pay for the actual hosting of the site on the Internet. This of course is a pittance but the hosting companies are needed to keep things secure and working effectively.

So, what I’m now wondering is, ‘Why aren’t we following in the footsteps of this well-connected, positive-intentioned civilisation?’ Oh, we’re already on the way are we? What year will it be when we’ve all got websites on Earth? Better yet, when are you going to get yours?