web darwinism and Steven Johnson's rain forest

The constantly expanding web is a self-sustaining eco-system. That is the gist of Steven Johnson's article "The Web is Like a Rain Forest." He points out that the massive amounts of information that constantly flows onto the Internet is used to maintain a healthy, balanced system. What Johnson does not talk about, whether by choice or not, is the data that is either never seen or barely seen by anyone.

I guess I would correlate this to a kind of web Darwinism. Johnson points out that the good stuff is linked to and recycled many times over, but says nothing of the lonely web pages that crawl off into a corner of the web to die. This is extremely important, as there is just not enough time in the day to be able to sift through all the information that passes onto the Internet. There needs to be a process where the weak are weeded out, and the strong goes to the top. I guess the question is, What doesn't Darwinism apply to?

Without this, it would be way too time consuming and tedious to find a good tidbit of information on the Internet.

electric sheep

This is a pretty sweet example of grid computing and art coming together. When downloaded, the electric sheep screen-saver uses the computing power from idle computers to create beautiful, complex, flowing images.

While this program does not tackle intimidating subjects like trying to find extraterrestrial intelligence or advancing medical research, it still provides a valuable resource that could not be practically achieved any other way.

Not only this, but it also gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. You know you helped to create something thousands of others are enjoying just like you.

big brother getting bigger?

This article on cnet.com tells of a new, extremely invasive bill Republicans in Congress are looking to pass. It forces "all Internet service providers to keep track of what their customers are doing online to aid police in future investigations."

If this isn't Orwellian to the max, then I don't know what is. I would equate it to being maybe a little more repugnant than the government rooting around a person's garbage can for incriminating refuse. It is disgusting on many accounts, and too much irrelevant, personal information would be caught in such a wide net being thrown.

If this bill passes, people can look forward to a whole new bureaucracy of Patriot Act-type magnitude.

This brings up another interesting topic: Are cities where the government is planning on implementing its own wireless Internet service already going to be doing this type of thing to monitor what their constituents are viewing?