Two days ago, Google launched an initiative that some are calling the “Power of the Internet initiative,” or the “Say something” campaign.

It simply asks you to complete this phrase: “The internet is the power to…”

This campaign came in the wake of the massive uprising on the web to block the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Google, many other large internet companies, and individuals joined together to stop SOPA/PIPA.

Google is now attempting to start a new conversation about what the web means to us all; a kind of proactive campaign against similar bills possibly getting passed in Washington.

There’s a lot of discussion happening on the web about Google’s “Say Something” campaign at the moment. Without getting into the details of those discussions, completing this sentence feels like a worthwhile exercise that can, at the very least, help us stay aware of how powerful the internet has become in our lives.

I’ll take a shot here, and I’d love to hear how you’d complete this sentence in the comments below.

The Power of the Internet

The internet is the power to extend your mind, express your heart, and change your life.

Tweets of compassion and kindness in a moment of disaster. Communities self-organize at the speed of texting to help those in need. The internet is the power to save lives.

Watch the sunrise in Cairo. Shop for a pair of shoes in your pajamas. Find a good place for lunch on your phone. Read a blog post on meditation. Learn about the struggle of Tibetans. The dwindling ice in the arctic and the polar bear’s long swims to find a surface to stand on.

The internet is the power to multiply your mind. Kilobytes. Megabytes. Gigabytes of knowledge downloaded into your brain, forming new neural connections. Bits and bytes fly at the speed of light to land on your screen. Your synapses fire together, then wire together, forming crystalline understandings and perfectly tied strings to pull on your heart.

Your heart lights on fire with passion and leads you to act. You donate a bike online to a girl in Zambia and her life is forever changed. She can now go to school and get to a hospital and get firewood and bring home jugs of water for her family.

The internet connects computers across the world but it is the power to connect hearts and minds that matters.

It is the power to take an idea and give it legs, to turn your knowledge into a product that can be sold on the web.

With hard work and smart marketing, you can go from idea to revenue in a matter of weeks or months. Your message, your knowledge, your wisdom, published on the internet with a few clicks and it starts to help people. It gives them a chance to change their lives for the better.

They learn from you in time-delayed content consumption. They make changes to the way they’re doing things, and the world evolves into a better place, one customer at a time.

You have an entire content creation factory in your laptop, and it’s connected to the world. With it you can create a new career for yourself, hire people to help you, build a company around an idea that fills a need you see in the world.

The internet is the power that makes that possible.

It can remove boundaries between people. Connect them across space and time. Repair an old friendship. Heal an old family wound. Support a friend in a hard situation.

It can transform your whole being into laughter in 5 seconds with a funny video. Laughter spreads across the globe like a happy virus. Millions watch it and laugh in a day. And the world, even if for just a moment, gets a little lighter.

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