Great Gobs of Knowledge!!!

The report of my death was an exaggeration. — Mark Twain

Shhh … I’ll let you in on two little secrets.

The Internet is NOT dead, and “Surfing the Web” is making a comeback!

There’s a tribe of authors promoting various aspects and versions of Dead Internet Theory.

Some of the concerns are valid, but the overall reality is not true (yet).

I spend a ton of time on the Internet and its symbiote the Web. I assure you that they are both still alive and kicking (for now).

Sure there are missing pages and sites — it is the nature of the beast.

When Online Content Disappears (Athena Chapekis, Samuel Bestvater, Emma Remy and Gonzalo Rivero, PEW Research Center)

This doesn’t mean that the Web is unusable.

Broken links are the potholes of the Web. Just because there are annoying holes on the road doesn’t mean that you throw up your hands, park your car and give up driving.

Once you get past worrying about them, you will see that there are still millions of people out there creating, posting and maintaining great big gobs of beautiful “human-generated knowledge” for you to find and enjoy. I am certain of this because the hundreds of pages on Cosma link to thousands of resources that in turn link to millions more.

Now that that’s out of the way, I want to invite you to take up the lost art of Surfing the Web.

It is retro, but it is making a comeback.

Start by taking some sample Adventures. They are over a hundred “posts” about fun and interesting stuff on the Web. Just browse the list until you find a title that strikes your fancy.

Exploring Cosma’s Adventures will help you see that the Web is (still) a wonderful place!

Speaking of place, there are also many 3D resources on the Web, too!

You can use Cosma’s Web Worlds to explore them.

They have “visual links” to spatial experiences.

Click on objects to see sample experiences, and click doorways to go to other Web Worlds which also have objects and doorways that link to many more experiences on other sites.

You can also explore it on Kuula.

Finally, look below to find over a hundred links to a sample of the many thousands of resources you can find distributed across the pages of Cosma!

Treat them as a starter set for setting out on your own adventures in knowledge on the Web (while you still can)!

Happy Web Surfing!

p.s. I’ve become quite taken with Mojeek for surfing the Web — it provides a more traditional and “uncluttered” experience 🙂

Find out more about the Web, the Internet and knowledge in general …

Just a Tiny Sample of Knowledge on the Web

Paraphrasing J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, “It’s a dangerous business, clicking on a link. You glance at a story or video, and if you don’t watch out, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Reference & Learning

Webster
OneLook
Roget’s II (Thesaurus.com)
Visuwords

Contents: Outlines (Wikipedia)
WolframAlpha

World Clock (Time and Date)
Calendar Converter (Fourmilab)
Date & Time Computations (Wolfram Alpha)

Maps on the Web (Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas-Austin)
Geography & Maps: An Illustrated Guide (US Library of Congress)
Reference Web Resources (Geography and Map Reading Room, US Library of Congress)

WorldCat
Browse by Melvil Decimal System (Library Thing)

Subjects (Open Library)
The Online Books Page (John Mark Ockerbloom, University of Pennsylvania Libraries)

Crash Course (Web)
Crash Course (YouTube)

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
OER Commons: Open Educational Resources

OpenLearn from The Open University (Official Website)
OpenLearn from The Open University (YouTube Channel)

MIT Open Courseware

Languages (OpenLearn from The Open University)
OWL: Online Writing Lab (Purdue University)