cosina
"I think being a woman is like being Irish." — Iris Murdoch
The internet has no mother
Tags: 
more too much
more too much Emma gets this little magazine from school called Time For Kids. It actually works out to less time for kids, because they have to read it for homework. It's a cutdown version of Time magazine.
This morning, as I was shoving her things into her big blue backpack, I see the cover story: "Too Much Information."
You can guess that the supposed culprit is what Dubya calls "the internets."
That damn internet is apparently spilling data all over the place, and there's no one to clean up the mess. The internet has no mother.
It really irritates me. I don't mean the mess, or the fact that the internet has no mother. It's the stupid story! Too Much Information? Don't they mean "more too much information"?
When was there ever NOT "too much information"? On my home planet, we have these things called newsstands. The most casual passerby would see an array of dozens of magazines and newspapers and even books.
I don't remember anyone ever stopping at one of those stands and crying out, "How will I ever read it all?"
No one ever fell to their knees in front of a library, their head exploding from the information overload.
They just picked up the few items that INTERESTED them or that they HAD to read, and went on their way, leaving all the rest of the data behind them.
Did you know you can get sports headlines real time, all the time? I don't care.
You can follow the price of aluminum as it fluctuates. So what?
You can watch the faces of people as they watch "two girls one cup." If you want to! No one will force you.
What I'm trying to point out is that you are NOT looking at everything on the internet. There are people who only use the internet to play parcheesi with friends far away. You don't. You don't even know what parcheesi is. You don't want to know.
There used to be websites -- lots of them, actually -- where you could click on a link and go to a random website, just somewhere on the net. It was cute and fun because the web was so small back then. Nobody does this "random website" thing any more -- at least, not like they used to -- because who cares? You look at what interests you.
How is that an information glut? How is that information overload?
This morning, as I was shoving her things into her big blue backpack, I see the cover story: "Too Much Information."
You can guess that the supposed culprit is what Dubya calls "the internets."
That damn internet is apparently spilling data all over the place, and there's no one to clean up the mess. The internet has no mother.
It really irritates me. I don't mean the mess, or the fact that the internet has no mother. It's the stupid story! Too Much Information? Don't they mean "more too much information"?
When was there ever NOT "too much information"? On my home planet, we have these things called newsstands. The most casual passerby would see an array of dozens of magazines and newspapers and even books.
I don't remember anyone ever stopping at one of those stands and crying out, "How will I ever read it all?"
No one ever fell to their knees in front of a library, their head exploding from the information overload.
They just picked up the few items that INTERESTED them or that they HAD to read, and went on their way, leaving all the rest of the data behind them.
Did you know you can get sports headlines real time, all the time? I don't care.
You can follow the price of aluminum as it fluctuates. So what?
You can watch the faces of people as they watch "two girls one cup." If you want to! No one will force you.
What I'm trying to point out is that you are NOT looking at everything on the internet. There are people who only use the internet to play parcheesi with friends far away. You don't. You don't even know what parcheesi is. You don't want to know.
There used to be websites -- lots of them, actually -- where you could click on a link and go to a random website, just somewhere on the net. It was cute and fun because the web was so small back then. Nobody does this "random website" thing any more -- at least, not like they used to -- because who cares? You look at what interests you.
How is that an information glut? How is that information overload?
