Introducing The Internet

The amount of websites available on the world-wide-web is staggering and stretches far past 250,000,000, an amount that just keeps on growing for every year that passes.

Within this gargantuan mass of browsable locations there is a large amount of overflowing information and creativity, sites that inspire you, inform you and assist you in your pending struggle. Yet there is also a big load of nothing. There are websites that provide you with just domains, ads and under construction signs. No information, no inspiration, no entertainment at all.

While the number of null websites greatly cut down on the total number of sites available, there are still more good websites than you will be able to visit in a lifetime, much less partake in all the useful resources or services of. What a waste, right?

It's Wide, The Web

Even if you did spend your whole life trying to visit all the websites in the world, even if they weren't constantly updated; even if new sites weren't constantly created, the goal would be completely impossible. During the past decade the amount of available websites has doubled many times over and quickly breached the limit of sites anyone is able to visit in an abnormal life. Much less a normal life.

The web is wide, and it is growing even wider. Even though it has not yet surpassed the lifespan of a normal human being, it has by far outsourced humankind in terms of possible informational intake. The net is a world of its own, a world that in terms of content may be a bit bigger than our own material Earth. The thought is pretty amazing, and at the same time... a bit depressing.

It is after all a completely artificial world, without any material connection to the world, reliant of electrical and technological life-support to stay existent. In difference from the Earth it does not have the ability to sustain itself, it is as far from a perpetual machine we will ever get. If the electromagnetic field on this planet suddenly started to waver just a little, the Internet would collapse instantly... along with all our data. Unless our data is stored in a high-security server-farm bunker with EMP protection. But that's a different story.

The point is that the amount of informational input is constantly outgrowing the resources available to maintain all stored material. This does not mean you won't be able to access the net, or that large communities will start crashing like stars out of the skies. This means that the constant stream of digital material is too much for the material world to sustain. It's like trying to pour too much water through a filter. Some of it inevitably disappears over the edge.

Though storage capacity is growing all the time, so is the demand for storage; at a much faster pace. The net is dynamic, and just like a human being, a lot of information is lost in the process of evolution. Just think about all the photos, articles & fragments of memory that are constantly erased in the ever so persistent flow of activity online. Sometimes they are discarded accidentally, some purposefully to make way for the new. Some of it is missed, some of it forgotten and some of it never even noticed.

There is a lot of ambition involved in the making of net. Along with a lot of nothing there's also a lot of creativity scattered out across its massive surface. Though you probably stumble over many great sites now and then in your venture across cyberspace there are doubtlessly a lot of places you would like to visit that you don't know about yet, places still left undiscovered. But how do you filter the good from the bad? The useful from the needless?

The world has been mapped. You know the continents, the seas, many of the countries, probably even countless cities around the globe. On the net there is still much white space, still a lot of new domains popping up all over the place. The progress is not confined to a certain space and thanks to the never-ending expansion taking part there is no map. You rely on tools (like Google) to find what you are looking for, and even then the results are ultimately dictated by of the tool.

The results may be relevant if you enter the right phrases, but how do you find something if you don't know what you're looking for? There is no brochure.

Caught In The Net

I have probably visited hundreds of thousands of websites along my ventures online, and I've found plenty of unique and well-made ones on the way. Some of the sites I visited lured me in and kept me there, some tried but failed miserably; some didn't even bother.

I used to have a loooong list of bookmarks in my browser, a list that consisted mostly of websites I thought looked interesting, none that were of continual use. Eventually I filtered through my bookmarks (a computer crash did most of the work though) and I now use it to keep track of places that I'll need to return to, for work, or pleasure, or both. I keep sites in my bookmarks only until whatever mission they were relevant to has been accomplished.

Even if there are plenty of great sites out there, it would be a waste of time to partake in the constantly renewed stream of inspiration they provide. There's just too much good stuff online! So instead of storing the great sites I stumble upon in my bookmarks, I list them here. I started this links page to list sites that I liked and wanted the rest of the world to know about, and it has expanded into a directory containing not just websites I admire but also websites that have a purpose; a use.

Like all tools used to find sites, this one is confined to what I like to visit, not what I think you want to see. We are all different so there would be no sense in that anyway. My ambition is not to gather all the best sites in the world here, but rather to provide a database of relevant links that are of continual use to both myself and anyone out there like me.

As I work primarily with design when online, resources of a web-related sort are the primary focus. There is probably something here for everyone though, even you, even if you don't have the least bit of interest in design or web related services. I'm happy you found this site, since the chance of you doing so is as small as finding any of the many ones listed. Enjoy! :)