what is it?

I was speaking to an old friend today about the Internet.
What is the Internet? He said.
Yeah yeah.
No - what is the Internet? What is the Internet?
Oh right. I shrugged.
I didn't have this online definition up my off line sleeve. Or this
Who knows.

I've been told it's a research tool, but it's bloody hopeless. He added.

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Comments: what is it?

Please to consider my silence approval, generally, of your always interesting and at times most droll efforts, making exception for this, comment, which is to say that.
And also to wonder if you've tried this A9 thing
http://a9.com/-/company/whatsCool.jsp
yet?
It is a Google-Amazon hybrid, or purports to be.
Google has my loyalties all sewn up, generally, but searching is a dispassionate enterprise, engine-wise, and I keep looking.
Also your countryman, Barista,
http://dox.media2.org/barista/archives/001161.html
has a little squib vis. Google's vulnerability to reactionary fiddling.
Also I have here by me that Google Hacks book
http://a9.com/Google%20Hacks
that I paid good money for, but it took seeing your use of the [define:] protocol to bring it into my purview. No reflection on the book's author that, just my own slothful ways.
Also I missed entirely that time you linked and said good things about that Fridge thing I did, and take this opportunity to thank you for that, having recently discovered it in your archive.
Thank you for that.
Posted by vernaculo at September 25, 2004 06:39 PM

A9 looks good. Just tried (randomly - as I remember my google search of a few months ago)
"Betty Grable Fred Astaire" and it was much more efficient. I could have got to this page in two.
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/barnard/theater/kirkland/3136/1930sgallery/pages/LS1934.3.htm

Is it the presence of images?
The combo is an interesting thing in itself for data retrieval. Must play with it.

And Google Hacks looks worth a read.

Thank you for your kind words. Timely.
(What is the Internet?)
& I was very taken by your Fridge/s.


Posted by boynton at September 25, 2004 08:02 PM

Interesting.
The Internet is seen as research tool. Very academic. On this model it is akin to going into library and looking up an index.

How about a Heideggerian perspective: connecting up with broadband discloses a world.

That world is there but it has remained hidden even though it now enframes us and our activities.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at September 26, 2004 06:19 PM

That's great, Gary.
I think that is the model he was using, and has found some online indexes wanting. I muttered something about the 'invisible web' - but much prefer the sense of undisclosed world. (Undisclosed even on poorman's dialup)
Posted by boynton at September 26, 2004 07:33 PM