Op-Ed: Become a Halloween hero — be your neighborhood’s full-size house-cat for the weekend
Barry M. McNeil was one of the first humans to step into the world of the Internet.
At the age of eight, he started visiting his cousin Chris in his home in New York state. He soon went on to help co-write the book that helped him create the world’s first web browser, which also spawned the world’s first search engine and a series of websites.
But that’s not what got him noticed.
It wasn’t that he would help solve any of the world’s biggest problems. Rather, McNeil, now 27, found himself as the star of a popular reality show called Web Heroes.
And McNeil had the good fortune to get to live out his dream as the host of “The Web Heroes,” a series that has spanned two years.
Barry McNeil (no relation)
To celebrate a year that has featured a few successes (a Web Heroes fan wrote a thank-you note to him for his generosity), and a few failures (the first season had to be put on hold because McNeil’s house was struck by lightning and was destroyed), McNeil is sharing two lessons that he’s learned as a web-savvy superhero:
The Internet isn’t just for sharing stuff, it’s for building something, too.
You can become great at something, but you can’t become great at being a “Hero.”
What is “The Web Heroes”?
The show, created by the team at “Spy Kids: Mission Critical,” follows Barry McNeil and his family as they brave the dangers of a cybercafé, the office of “Saving the World from a Spider,” and the “World Wide Web of Death.”
Over the last few years, McNeil has become the face of the Internet as a superhero. Since he was the first to sign up for a Web Heroes account, he’s been involved with the show as a member of the Team “I Can Do Awesome.”
The team was formed when McNeil and his team visited the White House to meet President Barack Obama
