I’m going to pretend I’m not in the timezone I’m in, and that it’s still OneWebDay. And sing the praises of the internet. Specifically, “today,” I realized again how much I depend on the availability of information on the internet and the communication possibilities it opens up. As examples, two things:

• Hotel room, 3am, preparing talk for the next morning’s session. I need to look up a quote or a result or whatever. It’s in the Nachrichten von der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. That’s not on JSTOR or in the Springer Historical Archives. Where do I go? To the Göttinger Digitalisierungs-Zentrum! It has saved my ass so many times!
• Working on a book with a bunch of other people. Everyone’s tracking down references for the bibliography, proofreading, making changes. Thank god we don’t have to send all the files back-and-forth every time we fix a typo—we have Subversion!

Thank you, Internet. But mainly thank you to all the people who make stuff available (for free!) on the internet.