loonyblog.

The Internet, defined.

Not too long ago, I was asked here at the day job to name a single site that I felt was the perfect example of the Internet in all its glory. Being the annoying person that I am, I came up with two: How Stuff Works and FARK. Those two sites are of course wildly different from each other, but they both illustrate beautifully what makes the web so great.

How Stuff Works is easily the single most useful site on the web (not counting Google of course, since it's a search engine and not an individual site), as it contains specific information on how practically everything works (and continues to grow daily). If you've ever wondered how something (whether it's mechanical, biological or astrological) functions you can find it there.

As for FARK, well it's FARK. No source is better for wild news stories, and when I say that I'm including the AP and Reuters, both of which have their own Oddly Enough stories. What FARK doesn't get enough credit for are those times when the site mentions actual breaking news stories...which happens fairly regularly. I'm not ashamed to admit that I first heard hostilities had broken out in Iraq care of FARK...the crazy thing is that FARK's news feed had the headlines up before CNN or The New York Times sent out their e-mail news alerts. FARK is so ingrained in the web these days, that apparently radio stations that have a wacky news item segment regularly get their stories from there, often not even attempting to change the order of the stories they lifted from FARK.

Both sites have user interaction, which is obviously one of the real strengths of the web, although FARK is much more two-way, with a large community of readers, and increased interaction through the regular "Photoshop this" posts where readers are encouraged to doctor photos.

For me the Internet is about two things: interaction and information. With the Internet you have a virtually unlimited amount of information at your disposal, and these two sites typify that, along with the kind of two-way communication that no other medium can enable.

Posted by jason at August 5, 2003 05:20 PM | TrackBack | Read more: Geek Culture