< jpreston.xyz

the-light-of-the.world

Index date:

Last modified:

the-light-of-the.world was a piece of self-describing network software art I created that was active from May 2019 to June 2020. The original copy that was hosted on the site is presented below.

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:14-16 (NIV)

This website, the-light-of-the.world, serves as a humanist interpretation of this passage, by using the computer display as a lamp. The background is not completely black, but instead calculated from the number of visitors currently on the website. As more visitors arrive, the colour changes from black to white, increasing the brightness of the display/lamp.

We are the-light-of-the.world. We each bring light into this world. We shine brightest when we all shine together.

The website is set up so that it will reach full brightness at 8 billion visitors, and the United Nations projects that the world human population will reach 8 billion people around the year 2021 [1]. However, the International Telecommunication Union estimates that since the end of 2018 only 3.9 billion people have access to the Internet [2]. In this respect, the-light-of-the.world is both aspirational and critical. Fully lighting the lamp is a concrete goal and the product of significant collective action, but it is not possible until we close the digital divide.

[1]: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/
[2]: https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/2018-PR40.aspx