Nation.1 was a project to create what was described as an "online country" – a conceptual country based on the Internet. It was to be owned, populated and governed by the children of the world. Its borders were defined by the age of its citizens, as opposed to geography or ethnicity. The central goal of Nation.1 was to empower young people with a voice and representation in world affairs.

History

The Nation.1 concept began as a challenge by

Nicholas Negroponte Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte ...

to a group of young delegates of the 2B1 conference at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

in 1997. Several of these delegates had attended the GII Junior Summit in 1995, and others were part of the Generation Why Project in Olympia, Washington. Nation.1 was announced publicly in a 1997 teleconference to the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

Committee on the Rights of the Child The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a body of experts that monitor and report on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Committee also monitors the Convention's three optional protoc ...

, in a series of speeches at the Massachusetts State House and in an article in ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

'' magazine. The project was further developed by delegates at the Junior Summit 1998 conference, during which it adopted the use of Swatch Internet Time. In the following years Nation.1 was incorporated as a non-profit organization for youth empowerment. The Nation.1 foundation, its executive director and its assets merged officially with TakingITGlobal in 2001. Although Nation.1 is not directly related to the One Laptop per Child project, both projects were informed by the 2B1 conference, the GII Junior Summit '95 and the Junior Summit '98. The Nation.1 project explored a variety of translation and governance technologies as well as a variety of concepts key to the construction of a country. New approaches to youth-empowerment and autonomous self-government through the use of decentralized internet voting systems were discussed, as were topics relating to citizenship, education, economic exchange, trust, identification, and a usable international definition on what constitutes childhood. On this last question, an arbitrary boundary of 25 years of age and under was eventually established, although the variables of this boundary were widely discussed.

John Perry Barlow John Perry Barlow (October 3, 1947February 7, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for th ...

put in a request that the young at heart be admitted as ambassadors from the adult world, or at least be granted temporary

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Technology

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) d ...

recommended using a

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

in the formation of Nation1, three years before the founding of

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.. His advice led to the use of a wiki to help form the founding texts of the nation. A database-driven website and email mailing lists were used as the initial communication system, while the central committee laid plans for multi-lingual chat system and a distributed decision-making system called the ''Democracy Engine.''

Key people

* Brandon Bruce * Terah DeJong * Marco D'Alimonte * Maitreyi Doshi * Talena Foster *

* Lauren Keane * Hayley Goodwin * Ragni Marea Kidvai * Kanetaka Maki * Nick Moraitis *

* Dimitri Negroponte * Thomas O'Duffy * Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux * Ryan Powell * Warren Sack * David Sontag * Tannie Kwong * Emily Kumpel * Gerald Tan. * Nusrah Wali * Ian Wojtowicz * Jacob Wolfsheimer

Notes

{{reflist

External links

Nation.1's website archive
Information and communication technologies for development 1997 introductions Organizations established in 1997 2001 mergers and acquisitions

History

Technology

Key people

See also

Notes

External links