Who, Why
The letters across the top every page of this website are available for sale. Whenever one is sold, the purchased letter is made into a link to the purchaser’s website of choice. Then, half of the money is distributed among organizations doing important work.
In the next few days, i will update this article with a list of these organizations along with some of the reasons we would like to support them.
David Alan Harvey’s Emerging Photographers Fund
I’ve heard it said that photographer David Alan Harvey ‘does not have one bad bone in his body’, and I think this is true. He is an extremely busy person, a member of Magnum Photos, constantly traveling around the world, and yet dedicates himself and much of his time to teaching others about photography through his Road Trips online forum in addition to his workshops.
David has made me see that photography, like other forms of storytelling, is for everyone. It can tell stories to others and to yourself, about the world and about yourself. Through photography you can look through windows or at mirrors, you can be close or detached, but ultimately, you must make some form of eye contact and find your own voice and soul. David is all about helping you find your own self — a most important thing — rather than dictating what to do and how to do it. He not only teaches photography, he teaches life.
The readers and contributors at his online forum have created such a lively and inspiring place that David decided to start the Emerging Photographers Fund, where a stipend is given to a photographer with a compelling photographic essay to help the work proceed. Sean Gallagher was awarded the first stipend for his important work The Silent Wave: Desertification in Western China, and everyone has benefited from the continuing lessons and candid discussions about life, photography and everything over at Road Trips. More stipends are coming and the lessons to all continue.
I have learned much from and have been inspired by David Alan Harvey, and yet I have never met David in person…The wonders of this beautiful thing that humanity has created: the internet!…Links…A world of beginnings...
“People of Earth…The sky is open to the stars. Clouds roll over us night and day. Oceans rise and fall. Whatever you may have heard, this is our world, our place to be. Whatever you’ve been told, our flags fly free. Our heart goes on forever. People of Earth, remember.“
…and of ends.
Unfortunately, there are those who would rather lie, who would rather restrain, deceive and censor in order to maintain their power and extend the imaginary lines of the physical world into the digital world. The Road Trips forum is blocked in the ‘country’ known as China… Conversations are monitored in the ‘country’ known as the United States… (I use single quotes because I do not believe in the idea of separate nations).
Fortunately, there are organizations fighting for the free and barrier-less internet, for a free world. Up next: Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
In order to know what is real and to be happy you need to be able to think critically, to find out for yourself about the world, about the workings of things in life, about what is life and how to live. Your need real education, which is not to be taught what to think, but how to think. Writing systems, tablets, papyrus, books and the printing press were revolutionary for the communication of thought, for education, and now we have the internet: perhaps an even greater revolution in its ability to throw up information in a global wind and open communication near and far in a free space for the exchange of ideas.
As long as tools have been available to help humans communicate their thoughts there have been those who have used the tools to force their will upon others in order to seek and maintain their own power, wealth and position. Before the internet it was easier to control the mass printed matter media and the TV and radio waves. There were gates, and those gates had keepers with the power to select the information that was transmitted. It was a one-way communication, broadcast by few, received by many—a perfect propaganda tool for the few in power.
The internet has changed all of this, and I believe it to be the greatest thing human beings have invented for it allows for access to direct, unmediated communication and information for those seeking it. The internet makes human banter and information free.
The internet is not a thing, physical or virtual. It is an agreement. Ultimately the internet cannot be censored or controlled—it treats attempts to do so as damage and routes around this damage. There are those still who wish to create set paths and walled gardens and put rocks and gates across artificial entrances and crossroads. They cannot be successful because truth, like the internet, is a pathless land. Nevertheless, they pollute the online land and slow down the internet’s realization of the human need to communicate, and they continue to spread fear instead of open discussion and understanding. The open nature of the internet is something worth standing up for, and I am happy that the people of the Electronic Frontier Foundation are standing tall.
Computers have become a large part of the lives of many of us, but not everyone is lucky enough to be technically skilled with internet browsers and methods of bypassing attempts at censorship. Fewer still realize when they are being spied upon by governments, corporations and others who consider themselves above another man. These people and all people benefit from the battle against power and greed fought by the EFF. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has stood up against the most powerful in the world, and for this and their various other actions I am proud to have the EFF as a beneficiary of donations from purchases of Generous Alphabet letters.
If you are financially wealthy, please help the EFF in their fight for it is our fight, and if you are interested in a little promotion for yourself and in helping me pursue my photography and Amber her writing, as well as helping the EFF, then please purchase one of those gay grey letters on the top of this and all other pages of this website. They long to be made beautiful blue links to your own place on the internet, and your name and letter will stand for the freedom of man and thought.
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