Aikido on the Internet
by John McNabb
Aikido has always been intended to bring people closer together, and so it's not surprising that a great deal of information on aikido is available on the World Wide Web, which was also meant to bring people together. The web page known as John Murray's Aikido Stuff (http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~murray/aikido/) is an important resource. It contains video clips of O'Sensei, Kisshomaru Ueshiba, Morihiro Saito, Christian Tissier, and Steven Seagal, among others. These clips can be downloaded and played on your own PC or Mac computer.
What most impressed me about John Murray's web site was his Aikido Online Calendar of Events. This is a list of aikido seminars compiled from sources such as: Aikido Today Magazine, Aikido Journal, aikido-l (the Internet mailing list), as well as e-mail submissions. With all these sources, this web page is a good one to visit if you want to find out about upcoming seminars. Sounds good so far, right? Well, I'm not done yet. After John Murray collects all this seminar information, he runs it through a computer program that scans it for the names of well-known senseis. This program then highlights the sensei's name so you can click on it and be taken to a description of that particular sensei, and maybe even a photo. Or you can choose to just look at the Index of Sensei Information Pages, and look up any Sensei directly. Bill Collins is listed, and it states that he was reportedly the first Canadian to receive a black belt in aikido. Yavuz Taneli of Turkey is credited with supplying the information, via e-mail.
If anyone is interested in looking up old discussions held in aikido-l, the aikido mailing list, John Murray has archived every message since April of 1993. They are all indexed, and readily available for browsing.
There is also a Random Collection of Aikido and Martial Arts links around the Web. Click on this, and you will be web-surfing off into many directions, following links to aikido around the world. What would O'Sensei say?
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