What the Web makes possible

I have an MLIS (Master of Library and Information Studies) so as long ago as 1996 when the Web was really gaining momentum I had lots of long and involved conversations about traditional vs. online publishing and how the Web ‘allowed’ the publishing of stuff that would not normally be published. Also publishing by people who would not’ve considered themselves as someone who had anything to publish – whether that be their personalities, the lack of anything to say or ‘questionable’ nature of their content. Back in ’96/’97 the Web was behind the ultimate accessory – a homepage and an influx of information from the gay population. Of course this unedited, unmanaged, publishing free-for-all lead to the fears that if anyone could publish anything then we’d see porn and bomb-making sites and violent images every time we turned on our computers.

I digress. My point is that I am still amazed by what ‘resources’ are out there which would be unlikely to exist or be published if it wasn’t for the Web. A joke request I made earlier today about needing a “plane-spotters” site turned out to be no joke at all. There are loads of them. And they’re very serious. Just check out this section of a plane-spotters site – devoted entirely to Air New Zealand 746’s! And what a crazy URL!

http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos.php?offset=90&where=search|Boeing%20747-4|Air%20New%20Zealand|-2|-2|||1|||||||Boeing%20747-4|-2|Air%20New%20Zealand|-2||||1||-2|-2||||all|2|||||||||||||||