metafork

Dave Rogers mused a couple days ago on dreams as a metaphor for the web. One function of dreams seems to be to try all kinds of random associations and see which ones "work". I think he gets to the heart of it here:

What's most important is that these dream-producing links and associations are often woven together into a tapestry of richer meanings that can give us remarkable insight into ourselves if we are skilled and committed to understanding them. They can tell us glorious stories about life and contribute to our personal growth.

Links and associations play a similar role on the Web. It's a madhouse of wildly disparate hyperlinks...

Interesting thought. Regarding determining which links "work", Google's page ranking algorithm helps bring the best-linked "ideas" to the forefront. Wouldn't it be interesting to somehow reinforce link priority given how often links are followed? That would mimic what seems to happen in our brains: links would fade (but never quite to oblivion) out of disuse. But to track this you'd need a central place through which all links were directed, and this butts up against the trust catch-22 I mentioned earlier.

April 24, 2002 03:12 PM