When I first dialled in to the web in the mid-1990s it seemed to be full of homemade pages dotted with traffic cone pics and signs saying "this website is still under construction". Great days.
These days, putting a little traffic cone on your blog would be seen as pretty retro. Maybe that's because everyone knows your website will change.
The web is always under construction.
We're very aware of this in the Welsh language parts of the web. We have a small number of media companies producing stuff online. Other than that if we want to see things in Welsh on the web, we currently have to rely on independent, DIY efforts.
So this is what the Pethau Bychain event this Friday is all about. It's a day to celebrate the Welsh language online and to encourage more people to put blog posts, videos, audio and other things in Welsh online.
By that I mean all the stuff that you can put on the web, our recipes, our poems, our songs, pictures, our rants, animated Lego stories, that kind of thing. Pethau Bychain is just a push to encourage people to create the kind of web they want to see.
The original idea for Pethau Bychain emerged from a bunch of friends - with hardly anything in common except a love of creativity and the Welsh language.
It's open to anyone who wants to take part, from the fluent to learners, would-be learners and new friends of the language. If you want to take part, just make something in Welsh and post it or upload it on the day for other people to see. That allows for an unlimited number of creative possibilities in many different places online. A single word is just as welcome as a full blown story. Either way, just make it a good one.
Make sure you tag anything you post with pethaubychain (or #pethaubychain on Twitter) where possible. A healthy number of people have pledged to take part on the day. It'll be fun to see what people create.
For me Pethau Bychain is about the ideal of ensuring our media accurately reflect what's going on. Media are now owned, in a sense, by you and me which potentially brings us closer to that ideal. That said, I'd love mainstream media companies in Wales to be inspired by this grassroots action and think about what they should be doing online.
The first printed book in the Welsh language was published in 1546. It's hard to imagine a world without that particular technology. If what's happening online today can be thought of as a comparable revolution in publishing, what would be possible - our own reformations? If so, what kind?
Going further back, I'd like to think the guy who originally coined the phrase "pethau bychain" many years ago understood the concept of a web, not the web of computers as we now know it but the web of people. Through little actions, an individual person has always had some influence over the people he or she knows which has surprising and unforeseen effects. There is some fascinating new research into this phenomenon, as it goes. So don't write off the day of little things.
More info on Pethau Bychain is at pethaubychain.com
Carl Morris helps run the Welsh language for beginners blog Clwb Malu Cachu, and also writes on his personal blog Quixotic Quisling which is about music, language, arts and business. You can follow him on Twitter here.
