1. My Motivation and Vision

1. What is the idea?

2. How do you count users?

3. Who are you?

4. Are you genuine/is this a joke?

5. How did you come up with the idea?

6. Why 6.5 billion people?

7. What will you do with the resources?

8. Why should I upload myself?

9. How long will the site be online?

10. If you aimed at the world, why start at WashU?

My Motivation and Vision

Everyone is bound to make some decisions in life upon certain periods of life and I am not an exception. Over the past two years after I have launched my little animation portal about Chinese animations and introducing the flash animators to the west, I am also adding youtube video links from worldwide popular singers, rappers, music bands, and sport stars. In other words, I am trying to gather enough content for my site to let visitors stay.

Then it was last year, an idea struck me and still reminding me up to these days: If I were to build a web site, let everyone to participate in some forms, how big can it be? Obviously, the total population of the world is 6.5 billion. I was also aware of the success of the milliondollarhomepage, created by Alex Tew of England. Therefore, I knew the importance of a web site name that will left a strong impression in the minds of people. Hence I was entertained with the idea of renaming my site 6billionpeople.

Of course, having a name does not mean much unless you have found some intrinsic value people will be willing to participate. Since I have already been using wiki as a supporting platform to describe about the animators, and singers. Singers, rappers are usually widely known as individuals in a given society. Animators, on the other hand, are only well-known within their respective circle, though usually more reputable than people who are in other types of occupations. In conclusion, their autographies usually generates wide interests among society members.

So the idea is, what if, what if I were to create a wiki that let each us to write an autobiography about ourselves, and just like wiki, you can link to your friends and your family members, and it is constantly changing expanding? Even better, what if each of us eventually will have their autographies translated by our commmunity into 196 different languages in the world?

The largest challenge about the project is how willing people are at exposing themselves to a mass audience? Despite the fact that may be only the circle of friends is more and less frequent visitors to his wiki. I am certain some people were meant more expressive and write about their friends who are not willing to exposed? Of course, having 6 billion autography entries is almost unrealistic as it can gets. But I think having stick to such a name showing some determination and goal.

The reasons reminding me writing an autographies were many:

First of all, we may die any time, so taking chances is a key. This is applies both to myself who tries to launch this project. If I were not to write an autography may be I will NEVER have chance by tomorrow. This principle also applies to you.

Second, the history of the world up to this point, is made up of few people who made "impact" on society. But each of us, either because of our role in society or just purely out of luck, never make ourselves onto the list. This does not mean we did not do anything or simply a waste in life, it is just people don't know about us. Each of us is as sentient as those who hit the jackpot or those commanded millions or those who managing assets worth billions and billions of dollars.

Thirdly, a facebook does not allow anyone to add dead people. It may sounds very grim. But yes, you may be interested to add an entries about your grand-grand father because he had done something interesting in life yet unrecorded along with others. Yes, 6billionpeople shall serve the purpose of a genealogy project to some extent.

Finally, this site may have some historical values. I was entertained by TV episodes describing the Terra Cotta army of the Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty of China. Much about the lives of the daily lives of soldiers and their life story is unknown and unrecorded in history. Until an excavated ancient cave in today's western Hubei province shown that a person who had lived through the same period and written an autography about himself on bamboo slips indicating the lives of soldiers at the time. He happened to be such a soldier.

If our civilization ever ends because of war happening into the near future, which could be a possiblity although I certainly hope the chance of which will be small. May be we can have thing of value reminding others how we lived. May be ridicoulusly as it sounds, if the world were destroyed, all computer networks will be gone. So I may have to store the information on some discs and dig a hole and bury it under earth. Although, in my opinion, the world will be created by our future generations; therefore, the world is properly preserved by our future generation is running our simulations.

If you are by now convinced that this project may work, then why you ask me why should I do it?

Above all, there are probably a few people share similiar thoughts before, I am here to truly provide this service to you, as for just now.

First, I am student who majors in computer science. It is therefore, my natural tendency to try to build tools or platform so that others can use.

Secondly, I happen to be Chinese, in fact I am still a Chinese passport holder, I am here to study under the F-1 student visa. If I were ever launch a site which holds the name 6billionpeople, I potentially meant to gather every single soul under the sky. By far, with 1.3 billion people, Chinese are by far the largest ethnic group on the planet. I think being Chinese, in this regard, bear the responsibility to represent this entire group of people than any one else.

Moreover, I have traveled and lived across three continents in my life. Asia, Europe, and America. I knew more about the lives and styles than most people who had only lived consistently in one place or one culture throughout their lives. This is bonus point for me to establish cross-cultural and cross-national bordered site.

Finally, I have already established some connections within the industry and being encouraged by predecessors and founders of other sites and having experience myself at building some sites and interacted with some audiences.

If such project ever succeed, I am also contemplating the inner core meaning of this site. As one can see, each user, hopefully, represent themselves in a way that his friends and colleagues consider as creadible and yet offering some emotions and feeling usually not explicitly stated in usual social networking such as Facebook.

At the same time, it is unlike blogging site such as Xanga in which you can freely to publish any entries on the random basis, because certain formats restrict on how you can write about yourself, following a chronological order. It will become more or less a collective subjective memories of all human. We should call ourselves a nation. The nation of 6 billion people, and we can treat each of us as "citizen" of this nation. Then it is quite clear at this point, I want to create a nation, which happen to be digital, and the best way happens to implement it is by building a wiki- based site, though I am keeping the animation and video portals alive, since i am still organizing these contents. Finally, it happens that I chose the name of the site 6billionpeople. Certainly, on the list of the largest numbers under wikipedia, million and billion are two smallest largest numbers and google happens to be one of the largest. Nevertheless, I think the unit people plays a significant factor here and hopefully, does sounds emphatically enough along with 6 billion. So friends, classmates, fellow citizens, be part of 6billionpeople!

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So I have this idea for some time already, it sounds a little crazy, but thinking about it, I think it is worthy to pursue. The idea is quite simple: try to digitally upload every single living being on the planet in the format of word document, images, videos, virtual reality / simulation / mind uploading (anticipated technology). Hence, "The 6billionpeople Project". Now, you may think 6.5 billion is a lots of people. Consider this, the speed of computer chips doubles every 18 months and the price of computer equipment drops exponentially. It is just a matter of time when everybody in the world will be online. Not to mentioning the impact of upcoming nanotechnology, femtotechnology, and ubiqituous wireless sensor network. Therefore, I think it is not a far-fetched goal.

The goal is to capture the sight and sound of every single living being, and forming a giant piece of art. Because I always considered myself an artist who freely drawn upon my own imagination, I like to see this project succeed not only artistically but able to feed myself economically. One of the primary motivation for doing this project is to raise enough money to support artists (myself included), because I don't like the idea of being an artist and being broke. I know some artists died of starvation in human history. Not a nice thought!

You will be recorded on the homepage permanently. Using some of the money I made from the site, I guarantee to keep mycampusvideos.com for at least 5 years and possibly for much longer time. I want each user to be recorded down as an agent who try to bring the world into the state of matrix. So, in the long run, you are making history by expanding the cyberspace. Help to extend human understanding and appreciation.

By the way, if you happened to be a Martian, Venusian, Mercurian, Jupiterian, Uranian, Neptunian, or Plutonian, I am sorry, currently our network only extends to human, not extraterrestial aliens. I also wanted to clarify that I am not a biologist (one who discriminate based on your biological makeup). I just don't have enough resources to do everything at once! However, thank you for your interest! I will email you if we will eventually expand our network beyond the earth.

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Once you registered on the web site, your record will be stored in the database. You can check and edit your profile as soon as you activated your account through your email. Because you uses your real name within the university system, you will not able to create a second username for yourself; therefore reducing the chance of inflated number registered users versus the number of people in reality.

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My name is Suan, I am currently 23. I graduated in December 2005 from WashU with a bachelor degree in Computer science and Economics. I am currently the first year graduate student at WashU department of Computer Science.

As a person, I like to create songs, stories, flash animations, new theories, and new ideas. In the past three years, I had dedicated myself fully at writing a long novel. I have roughly 700 characters in my story and so far I created the 200 of them and more will come as more inspiration hits me and a total about 20,000 ideas. (So if this project becomes a success, I can dedicate myself to novel writing.)

Here I got some snapshots of my drawings for you all, hope you enjoy them:)

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Okay, I think people are quite receptive to innovative ideas. Matrix is one of the top grossing science fiction movie in the US, but it was never created as the reality. By claiming my intention to create a Matrix by first building a website and transform into whatever form available in the future to hold energy, I think people will be actively to participate.

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I was observing the trend of the internet since I first went online in December 1998. Back then, it is a great achievement to create a webpage in HTML and put your name online. Then, I remembered the power of computer increases to the point of that hosting images become commonplace. That was around 2000. Just 2 years later, animation in the form of Macromedia Flash starts to dominate the internet. I was quite active in flash animation community, but a sudden paradigm shift took place when youtube launched video service in 2005. Suddenly, everyone, not just flash artists can create content. Youtube is EXPLODING. So I ask myself, what does all of these mean? I also well read Raymond Kurzweil's theories on upcoming Technological Singularity. So I realized that we are gradually moving ourselves bit by bit unto the internet. First, we just put our name there, then we start to put our pictures online, now videos, and in the future, our virtual reality, and beyond that possibly mind uploading. A website which offers the service of mind uploading is essentially the Matrix. So I realized that may be I should start to develop a site just to achieve the state of Matrix since I already envisoned the upcoming trend and knowing it will be inevitable.

For those who are interested in philosophical inquries, I strongly suggest to read this article by Oxford Philosophy Professor Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument. You can also read articles on Technological Singularity by Dr. Raymond Kurzweil. I highly recommend the book entitled Singularity is Near by the same author.

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Although I could just develop a small site which dedicated to such service to an exclusive group of people, if it is ever possible. However, I don't think it will work because technology always diffuses and spread sooner or later to all. Also, by claiming to upload the entire earth's population, I make myself committed to a high goal. If I fail, at least I will not fail too miserably. It also capture the imagination of people by including all people of the world. Moreover, the Matrix from the original movie also captured all the people of the world.

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First and foremost, if I make enough money through adsense, I can be more generous to my stomach. I will be less attentive to the price tags attached to food. I will quit eating fast noodle every day which made me sick. What? you ask me what about pants and cloth? I don't usually buy that much cloth. I believe intrinsic personal value is more important than extrinsic pretensions, especially for guys.

Immediately following what I said above, I will help my mother to live a better life. She sacrificed so much for me and I think it is time to pay her back. In fact, I don't think I can ever pay back, no matter how rich I will be because I can't buy back time for her.

Thirdly, artists, comrades, friends, all these great art works are created from the inspiration of various great young minds. They are expressing themselves to the world through the medium of flash technology. Don't you think the world will be a better place if the artists get paid for what they deserve? I am hearing applause, thank you!

Finally...if I reach the 6.5 billion target and it becomes a runaway success, I will invest the rest on some of my other great ideas. How great are them? I think some of them will continue change the world. No matter how miniscule they are. Wohoo! So watch this space for future updates!

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You upload so that you can share your life, dream, and happiness with your friends and classmates, just like the facebook, we will try to provide the best service to you all as possible. By uploading to the Matrix, you are just a step closer toward happiness and the future.

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The site mycampusvideos.com will be online for 5 years GUARANTEED (at least until May 15th 2011), however the aim of the site is to keep it online foreover.

The point is to create a site in which people of over the world will know more about each other, and share greater understanding and appreciation of each other. Everyone of you can be part of this, and everyone can help to make the world flatter!

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I actually own a site that drawns interntional audience everyday numbered in thousands, but the problem is, an open network lacks truthfulness and trust. I want to built a network starting at my immediate surroundings and gradually built up. Additionally, I had never tried to launch a website locally, so it is both a challenge and fun! Since I spent very little in marketing by establish it locally, I got nothing to lose!

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The web site contains the following major sections:

Yes! We now accept flash animation and video content from all countries and regions!