Of webs and networks
Sunday Nov 19, 2006
The San Francisco Bay fog is thick and low as I pant heavily to climb the first steep slope at the Stanford Dish. My body feels laden with 40 pounds of bricks as I struggle to reach the lowest summit. I do it once a week, yet why doesn't it get easier? The fog drip and morning dew mix and hang in the air. Objects normally invisible to the naked eye in the sunlight suddenly become crystal clear.
I am soon rewarded for my exertion. As I round the first corner to start the three and a half mile trek, my eyes delight at the sight of hundreds - no thousands - of lacy, crystalline spider webs. Each is delicately yet cleverly attached to every stalk of tall, wild grass and slender limb of nearly dead scrub brush.
I'm amazed and spellbound. It's a forest of tiny threads painstakingly woven into intricate networks shimmering in the deep gray morning light. As I pause to draw closer and investigate, my thoughts wander. I realize that the word for "web" and "net" and "network" are the same in some languages. I have visions of thousands - no millions - of computers all networked together. I'm thinking....the worldwide web; the 'net; "the network is the computer."
OMG, the linguist horticulturalist is morphing into a geek!
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Posted by Young Joo Pintaske on November 21, 2006 at 01:00 PM PST #