#1009 Internetworking

There’s lots of bad things about this here wide wonderful world but it’s a great time to be a writer. At least if you like to write and not get paid for it. Bloggers may be killing newspapers or newspapers may just be expiring from their exhausted business model, but there’s still a heck of a lot of writing going on.
I think it may be because some of the more arduous aspects of writing have been removed, thanks to the Internet. The other day when I was writing my piece about earwax, you may remember that I mentioned an odd artifact of my search for facts.
By the way, search doesn’t quite capture the lack of effort I employed. The word “search” once meant something more akin to an expedition. Now it means typing a terse phrase into a “search box.”
Which I did. I typed in “why earwax.” I was instantly and effortlessly rewarded with access to over 2,340,000 results. The artifact of the search? I found out that 1,280,000 people had made that exact query.
So think of the effects of this “internet” searching tool.
First, we are totally used to the word query. On the verge of being dropped as useless and antiquated by Webster’s a couple of decades ago it’s now in common use again. Three cheers for query.
Second, what once meant going into a library and burying yourself away in a dark microfiche booth for hours can now be done in your office online, in the full light of day, in a matter of seconds.
And third, and best of all, you can see how many other people have the same lame question as you.
I’m not alone. 1,280,000 people had the same question I did. Independently, without persuasion by some leader or movement.
1,280,000 people are interested in earwax just like me!
In the days of crying over your “cooking for one” cookbook and puddling up at your microwave because you know the reheat button may as well be spelled “pathetic”, the internet brings us together in a network of similar interests.
An internetwork if you will.
A community in the webbed wide world.
Let’s hear it for the earwax query nation!
America, ya gotta love it.