UNESCO designates The Digital City as a World Heritage Site

The Dutch online community ‘De Digitale Stad’, founded in 1994, has been designated a digital world heritage site by the United Nations.

This is the very first digital born heritage on this list. On May 23, the Dutch UNESCO committee will visit the Waag in Amsterdam to make the appointment official.

That is a compliment and international recognition for Marleen Stikker, who once took the initiative for DDS and was mayor there.

The DDS archive is now managed by Sound & Vision, which shares the news.

In the virtual city, users could communicate through chat rooms, build their own virtual homes, send emails, and participate in online events and activities. It formed the basis and inspiration for many other online networks after that. The Digital City was one of the world’s first public access portals to the internet and was built after the example of The Well in the US.

UNESCO is the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture.