Dear Internauts,

I have some exciting news to share this month, but first, I want to take a trip back in time: Just over 50 years ago in 1969, the first two nodes of the Internet were connected. This would begin a long series of innovations, like the TCP/IP specification developed by our PCI co-founder, Vint Cerf and the vision of Douglas Engelbart’s “Mother of all Demos.” People-Centered Internet was founded in 2015 in the same spirit of “participation by all” to ensure the Internet continues to be “a force for good in the world.”

Last year’s Internet Governance Forum in Berlin catalyzed a new area of focus for PCI on “Digital Cooperation and Diplomacy,” supporting the recommendations of the United Nations’ High Level Panel. Fabrizio Hochschild, Doreen Bogdan, Vint Cerf, Hinrich Thoelken, and I envisioned an informal network of those working to augment traditional diplomacy with the connections that technology enables and building on the spirit that energized the original spread of the Internet in the 1980s and ’90s.

As we come to understand that our interactions with each other will continue to be primarily “virtual” for many months ahead, I find myself returning to the idea that friendship and empathy fueled the start and the success of the early Internet. I recently had the privilege of addressing the World Summit on the Information Society, where I emphasized that the future of the Internet must follow a similar path, with leaders prioritizing equity and “do no harm” policies in their shaping and design of new and old systems.

Some have called this time of COVID-19 our “World Wide Pause.” For some of us — especially in the United States, Russia, India, and Brazil, where cases continue to rise — the pause is lasting longer than we could have imagined, while our friends in New Zealand, China, and many in the European Union cautiously reopen.

In the midst of these unique circumstances, we joined the world in marking the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, which was signed in San Francisco on June 26th, 1945. The preamble to the UN charter establishes what can still, to this day, be rightly called one of the most ambitious visions for the world on behalf of “We the Peoples of the United Nations.” Of course, the signatories could hardly have imagined a time when half the world would be digitally connected with the ability to instantly share experiences and information, or the challenges that would bring.