Public Launch of OneWorld Online

Peter Armstrong welcomes participants

The public launch of OneWorld Online was held on 24th January 1995 at the Foreign Press Association in London. Seventy-five invited guests came from development agencies, broadcast and print journalism, Government and the world of education, to see and discuss this new "meeting place for the one world community".

SOUND-BITES

• Peter Armstrong, Director, One World Broadcasting Trust:
  The One World Broadcasting Trust has always worked at the intersection between broadcasting and the debate on sustainable human development. For us the sharpest point of that intersection today is the Internet and everything it represents.

• Terry Waite, Patron of One World Broadcasting Trust:
  I feel particularly keenly the need for improved communications, because of having had an experience that deprived me of all forms of human communication for almost four years... except that one small postcard came through, from a woman I didn't know, bringing me a message of hope. I see an analogy between that and Internet.

Terry Waite

• The aim here is not just to exchange information. The aim is to improve understanding and to give a new impetus to the whole field of development - a word that's become perhaps a little hackneyed and tired these days. But no-one - no-one - who's ever spent any time beyond these shores will need reminding just how important this field is.

Anuradha Vittachi

• Anuradha Vittachi, Editor, OneWorld Online:
  The main thing that's different about this form of broadcasting, journalism, or publishing - or whatever you want to think of it as - is that it's in hypertext. That offers a means of solving a problem development journalists and broadcasters have always had: do you talk about the tip of the iceberg (the hard fact, the event that's happening now), or do you go further down the iceberg to give more background, more process? Or do you go still further down and try to understand the philosophy of it all? In a hypertext system, you can provide material on all these different levels, so your readers can choose to go to as deep a layer as they need.

Peter Armstrong

• Peter Armstrong:
  What we are showing you today is only a start. OneWorld Online is an embryo today and must grow and change according to the imput of everyone who wants to make use of it. So we will be holding a consultative conference in March for our present 22 partners and the many more we hope will be joining, so that we can all decide together how this experimental beginning can be put onto a firm foundation.

Peter Riding

• Peter Riding, Director, BBC Networking Club:
  We at the BBC Networking Club are delighted to host these OneWorld Online pages. This is our first joint project. The aims of the Trust are educational, the links with broadcasting are very close, and we felt that this was an ideal project to host and we welcome it very much.

Ritchie Cogan

• Ritchie Cogan, One World Group of Broadcasters:
  The One World Group of Broadcasters wants to campaign against a world of intolerance and division. We need communication above all else and I'm old-fashioned enough to say that I believe that communication should be free at the point of delivery. And if I have a query about this excercise, and I'm sure that Peter would share it with me, it is that the new information super-highway is a super-highway for the super people, with super money. And what we should all be campaigning for is to make this free to everyone. I want to be there to fight for that free delivery.

Mike Wooldridge

• Mike Wooldridge, BBC Correspondent:
  If a government, say, were to object strongly to information carried on OneWorld Online and wanted to try to remove it, is there in practice any way they could do that, and do you suspect that this is something might happen?

• Terry Waite:
  This is such a remarkable development and such an open medium at the moment, that my fear would be that there will be attempts made to get hold of the medium in some way and control it, by those who fear the free exchange of information for a variety of reasons, political reasons being predominent. I think that from the beginning we must get hold of the basic point that this should be made as widely available as possible and kept as free as possible.

Herbie Girardet

• Herbie Girardet, environmentalist, author and film-maker:
  I just wanted to say how pleased I am to be present at a historic moment. I think this really is one those extraordinary times when a major innovation is suddenly starting to make itself felt and I think we will feel the implications of this very rapidly indeed.

Annie Allsebrook, Angela Hawke (UNICEF)
and Alero Harrison (SCF) trying out the system

How to Join OneWorld Online - and put on your own pages

OneWorld Online Home Page