New Reading Notes - A Title That Eludes Me

I enjoyed last week's reading that had nothing to do with Lexia to Perplexia. Don't get me wrong, it's interesting stuff, but it's so WEIRD.

I'd like to elaborate some on "From Grid to Network." First, grids. Grids are quite efficient. Everything within has its place, easily accessed, and may even look good. Look at the map of New York we received. Sans traffic, the city would be a dream to get around. It just looks efficient. Meanwhile, Paris looks like a veritable train wreck. One way streets only work in a grid system. Organization is key. In a physical world, grids are a necessity. But, grids aren't everything. While terrific for city planning, the network is great for the World Wide Web.

If the internet was a grid, it wouldn't be nearly as terrific. What makes it work as a network are the links . Sure, a grid internet would have these things, but there wouldn't be a chance to access other related things. Look at Wikipedia. Every entry on the site has link to other related things or hyperlinks to sources at the bottom. I spend a lot of my down time just kinda surfing WIkipedia to just learn new things. Most of my obscure, worthless knowledge comes from this place. I do trust most of the content, most of the incorrect things are blatantly obvious. A gridded internet wouldn't allow a crossing of topics, it would only guide you to the same information over and over again. You know? That's boring.

But wait. Could it be that the internet is a bunch of grids networked together? I would say yes. There are many sites out there, and I would say that the grid aspect of the site is the genre, while the networking aspects of the sites is the hyperlinking between them. While you can easily stay within the genres, and therefore the grid, you can hop to another site via the network. In this non-physical world, the network is much more efficient. The internet is the grid-network hybird that is slowly becoming integrated to every facet of life.