The Internet

I am to revisit my mental model on how I would explain the Internet to an intelligent recluse who has been shacked up since the 80s.

I think that generally, I stand behind all of my previous notions. My big revelation of the semester being that you can always sneak a little more information in, though, means that I need to edit. At the end of my previous take on the Internet, I typed this paragraph:

Websites exist for many purposes. You can make a page with your basic personal info on a commercial site (mostly popularly http://www.Myspace.com, for instance) with the sole purpose of connecting with other users. Make a list of addresses of interesting sites and store the list on a website, and get to all these sites by directly clicking (using a mouse) on the address. The address will typically be underlined and in blue text to let you know that the text is linked to another site. That's why these instances of underlined blue text are called "links." Make a page for your business. Sell your products online in the global market- just tell your customers what you have available, and make a form they can fill out with their credit card information. Don't worry- many customers shop frequently online and are comfortable with giving you their credit card information. Once you get an order, ship out (or email) your good or service. In fact, you can buy and sell books, groceries, stocks, memberships to certain websites, or anything else you can think of on the web. Meet your future mate by joining a dating site that calculates compatibility using complicated mathematical algorithms. Got another idea for expanding the Internet? I bet you can put it on a website, get the word out, and chances are that it will catch on!

I still agree with all this, but I think this would be a great opportunity to talk about the importance of evaluative skills. I can also talk about how evaluating websites, since anyone can post one, is a critical skill taught in schools and libraries today.

Similarly, in a section of my previous passage where I talked about search engines, I could talk about how certain search engines are better for different purposes, and go into the differences between the free web and subscription databases. I could also relate this to evaluative skills.