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The ALEX
VAN STARREX Website
INTERNET
EXPLORATION
INTRODUCTION
Though I haven't thought of it before, the
internet community reminds me a lot of the premise in Philip Jose
Farmer's 'Riverworld' books. There, all of humanity finds itself
reborn along the shores of a vast swirling river between canyons
of insurmountable height. So, on this discovery, people set out
to find long lost friends and relatives, and to forge new
relationships, to meet the famous people of history or simply
settle old scores.
So, too, everything in cyberspace seems
somewhat fresh and familiar at the same time. Only the setting is
completely different. And, like a modern day Narcissus, we
discover a new world, that is simply a reflection of the existing
one around us, and become lost within it. But enough of the
classical allusions.
PATTERNS OF
DISCOVERY
The first thing that you want to do
when you go into cyberspace is run rampant - looking at
everything, old and new, with new and hungry eyes. Then, after a
while, the novelty starts to wear out and netsurfing becomes
somewhat more predictable. You start to take the search machines
for granted, and baulk when you accidently come across a site
that you've seen before. Then you start to wonder what happened
to all those 'essential' sites that you've bookmarked and when
you will get the time to revisit them all.
As hard as it may sound, sooner or later you're
going to have to settle down into a routine, in order to come
back to your favourite sites. Maybe once a week, fortnight or
month. I can see the day when web-browsers have a couple of
extras built into them:
- a way to type in (or load) a list of sites
that you intend to visit, later rather than right now;
- a self-maintaining graphical tree of all
visited sites, rather than a simple linear list;
- a better way to sort, organise and comment
on the sites that you - or others - have visited; and
- a scheduling program for visiting sites at
certain times, in order not to lose track of them.
Until we get these things, our excursions into
cyberspace will continue to be somewhat whimsical and haphazard.
Then again, some people like travelling this way.
'BEST OF' LINKS
BROWSERS &
PLUG-INS
DOWNLOADS & FREE
STUFF
GAMES
GENERAL
MAGAZINES
FTP & GOPHER
MULTIMEDIA
NEWSGROUPS
FILEZ.COM
- Search over 75 million ftp,
shareware and freeware windows and mac files
SEARCH TILE.NET
What's New
Too! -- Search through the hoard of web sites announced
every day
(click here to limit your search to specific
content areas)
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URL: http://homepages.tig.com.au/~avanstar
EMAIL: avanstar@tig.com.au
© Alex Van Starrex
