Talking to a brick wall...
Rants & Raves
Finding the Web
I think, these days, the web will never be what it was… at least never
entirely. It probably never entirely was what I just described it as,
just as it now is not ONLY a set of linked pages which can also be searched…
it is much, much more, so many different things to so many people.
And yet the primary ways through which we experience
it play perhaps the largest role in defining, for each of us, what the
web is. And so, to that end, I write this in hopes that I might show my
view (the right one, of course ^_^) to a few others and spread the idea
as far as I can.
A few places, like A
List Apart, k10k,
Praystation,
(one); Seanbaby,
The Onion,
(another); Sinfest,
Sluggy,
Bruno
and the like, (yet one more); and even in a way, my own site, Kenny's
and our other friends' sites (to at least
some extent); form communities, which are held together by links. They
link each other, talk about each other, talk about other communities and
link to them… The more professional of these sites I have listed even
seem to make it a point to link to other sites that they've found in their
random travels…
They, in a way, revive the art of browsing. They
are true to the original creation of the web. True to some, unnamable
things that the web was then and in at least some ways is not now. And
I applaud them for it.
The web is nothing, really, but a huge collection
or web of individual pages. Pages belonging to individuals like you, me,
our friends, our companies… And here, I call on you to make your individual
difference. If you have any idea what it is that I am talking about, if
you agree with me at all, then perhaps you should in your own way contribute
to this idea that I'm speaking of… an idea that (I think) is faint and
fading in today's Internet. An Internet increasingly made of useless,
cluttering, unfindable pages and large, business driven corporate sites…
these aren't bad, but all too often they exist with no relation to anything
else around.
The web is a community, and what is a community
but a set of relationships? When these relationships are lost, what we're
left with may be a community of sorts, but I think not one worth living
in. As far as I can see, we are going to be living with, if not in, the
Web for a long time now… and so I want to make it as nice a community
as I can, don't you?
- Brave New Web
- The World at your fingertips
- Through the eye of a needle
- New ways to search
- Just a Community
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Naturally, this would be incomplete without a link to AltaVista. Though much changed, it is still just about the best search engine out there, and it's not its fault I'm a weirdo ^_^
The newcomer, of course, also deserves a link. Google is now in many ways what I find the ideal search engine to be.
One of those professional sites that makes it a point to mention their wanderings? Try Kaliber 10000.
And, the home community is probably the most important. Probably the center of the community I claim to be a part of, Civilized Pigdom has played as much a part in the ideas here as any of the other sites I mentioned above, which is saying a good bit.
What is community but communication? If you want to be a part of this community, go rant a bit on your own at The Forum! >>
(AltaVista and the AltaVista Logo are are trademarks of AltaVista Company.)
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