The wonders of the web
Somewhere I’ve got a copy of Tim Berners-Lee’s autobiography, “Weaving the web” – the “inventor” of the world wide web. It’s a fascinating read if you’re a geeky type, all about how the web came about and required reading for any true or aspiring geek. TBL had a vision of a worldwide network of computers where you could hop from one place to another from within documents and then back again to where you first started if you so desired, links connecting related subjects and “pages”. The information sharing structure of the early networks of the early internet on which the world wide web is based was cumbersome to say the least. The web’s underlying protocols were in place in the internet, at least in part, but at that time there wasn’t an easy way of linking information between documents, but the vision of the web changed all that, and the hyperlink was born.
This week’s been a week of “firsts” for me, infact the past few weeks have held a number of firsts, and I’ve spent a good couple of days this week over on LiveJournal reading fanfiction (another first), just spinning my wheels, which I think’s done me good the state my head’s in at the moment with my current workload.
I spend probably around 90% of my working life online/at the computer, and a good proportion of my “off duty” time online too. I wander around the web an awful lot, researching stuff for work, looking for inspiration for sites, chatting on forums, managing my own forums, and sometimes just wandering around the web for pleasure (though I have to say that StumbleUpon is the work of the devil). There’s some fascinating stuff on the web, there’s useful stuff, there’s downright weird stuff, and everything in between.
What’s the point of this post? Well eons and eons ago – okay then, back in the 80s – there was a line in an old Pet Shop Boys song (I think it may have been “Love Comes Quickly”)…
Just when you least expect it; just what you least expect…
−− “Pet Shop Boys: “Love Comes Quickly”
That’s the beauty of the web, the allure of the web. Out there are billions and billions of pages, and equally huge numbers of hyperlinks. Click on any one of them and you could find yourself somewhere magical. Okay, you could find yourself on the dullest place on the web, on some weird site you just need to back out of as quickly as you can, washing your hands before you touch the keyboard again because heaven alone knows what nasties you could have picked up there. You could find some fascinating site on some obscure Welsh sheep farming site, or some horrendous 90s-esque atrocity complete with animated gifs and more <blink> tags and marquees than you can shake a stick at…or you could find yourself somewhere totally unexpected and wonderful; a jewel amongst the detritus.
I was looking for a temporary avatar for one of my online personae and was using Google’s image search to search out suitable pics. I found myself on Flickr and a few clicks later, though it wasn’t what I’d gone there looking for, I found a photo with a caption and an explanation of what had inspired the photo. Intrigued, I clicked the hyperlink cited, and there I was. I found myself in a place where I could totally lose myself, forget about all of my real life worries, and just immerse myself in another world. For the first time in I can’t remember how long I allowed myself the time to just switch of and read something just for pleasure, something without code blocks in it, if/else loops or tags, and even more miraculous, I actually finished reading something!
That, is the wonder of the web; finding that rare jewel amongst the detritus. One click and you can be in another country, another time, in another place.
