Keeping the Internet Old

The internet has never been a place for antiques. In fact, much of its creation was based upon expediting everyday tasks. And for the most part it has improved the world around us. My 'Gmail' account alone can house 35 times more information than the '95 collection of 'Encyclopedia Britannica'. The internet is growing faster, larger and increasingly precise, but i think in some ways relevance has injured something precious: finding the great things we weren't looking for.

I haven't been able to find it again, but I vividly remember a a kid I had an Encyclopedia that gave me one of the definitions of 'dude' not as I expected, but instead as an "ingrown hair on elephants' butt." I met a lot of 'dudes' that summer. That isn't a solid argument as to what we are missing, but the internet is losing its ability to serve up something we wouldn't have searched for specifically, but is pertinent to creating a more rounded individual.

Stumble Upon  is a site where users enter interests, and general search topics, and are then taken to sites based on users with similar interests, and is one example of a partial solution to this problem. But the problem still remained of a site learning from me, and catering information to what i liked. What I felt is missing that the old encyclopedia's got write was anecdotal information on multiple topics; not just the ones I needed. I likened it to a school reading list because just like there are some books we love that we would have never read without requirement, there are facts, and stories and information we miss with the ease of relevance searching.

There are assuredly more, but three sites that do this well are TED Talks, Futility Closet and Letters of Note. And they all cover it in a variety of ways. TED Talks focuses more on bringing fascinating talks from every field imaginable, and condensing these ideas into around 20 minute videos. Futility Closet is a blog run by an ex- editorial manager, Greg Ross, who covers topics from curiosities in history to mathematic equations and philosophy. Letters of Note is a compendium of historical and interesting letters gathered from all over, and brought into blog format. The point is it's there if you look, I just wish there was more.