Geneva, 10 December — Following is the text of the email sent this morning by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to students participating in the World Summit Event for Schools. The email was sent from the original Web server at Palexpo in Geneva as a side event to the World Summit on the Information Society:

“I am excited to be sending you this email from the computer that Tim Berners-Lee used at CERN to write the original World Wide Web software in 1990 — just 13 years ago. At that time, no one — not even Tim — could have dreamt that within a few years the Internet would connect millions of people all over the world in the blink of an eye. Just think how fast it has developed. Today, more information can be sent over a single cable in one second than was sent over the entire Internet during a whole month six years ago. 

Today, Tim and I are emailing you from Geneva, Switzerland, where world leaders are gathering to discuss how they can make sure that communication and information technologies benefit everyone. As participants from more than 80 countries in the World Summit Event for Schools, you are an inspiration to us all. And it’s good that on this day, the 55th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you are exercising your right ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’. 

I hope you will keep communicating with each other to build bridges of understanding between people and countries. By using technology in this way, you will bring us all closer to a more just and peaceful world, in which access to the Internet will be a right enjoyed by everyone. May this World Summit help us to see the world as a domain we all share”.