Sharing is almost implicit in the Internet – though things have certainly changed. I can remember the days when Altavista and Ask Jeeves were more or less equals with Yahoo and Google – indeed the Internet Archive allows me to confirm my memories. Almost a decade ago, the Altavista homepage informs viewers they can chat with the X-Files executive producer, as well as participate in the “raging topics” on the forums. Of course, “Beginners’ Corner” is listed as one of those same “raging topics” – in the scheme of things, showing the forum users actually had great foresight. But I’m not going to simply ignore the preposterous nature of Altavista’s “Web Directory” section, which presumes to chop the web up into browseable parts no more difficult to navigate than, say, your average suburban neighborhood (which, while seeming simple, can actually be very complex). Just two short years later, altavista.com has a completely different aesthetic, now opting for a quick-loading, minimalist approach to the search engine. I wonder how they came up with that one.
The best and most successful websites are those which keep rapid change in check in favor of intelligent, moderated growth. Google somewhat comes to mind, but I prefer a long-standing source of information (rather than seeker of information): erowid.org.
Since 1998, erowid has been providing intelligent information on all aspects of mind- and body-altering drugs and the spirituality, literature, and cultural events they have spawned. erowid continues to organize their information in “vaults” and combine expert and lay opinions to create the broadest view of reality possible.
On a personal level, erowid is very valuable to me. Where my elementary school’s D.A.R.E. program failed to show the reality of drugs and thus how to avoid them, I turned to the Internet for more complex answers. erowid was my first and from then on primary source of drug-related information. Though I did not experiment with any (socially unacceptable) drugs until years afterward, erowid provided multifaceted yet tangible information, while Officer So-and-so demanded I “just say no”.
With video blogs, Twitter, and social networking, the Internet has turned from a quiet, exclusive tea party to some kind of all-pervasive, anarchistic rave-fight-fuck. Nevertheless I maintain that sites like erowid, which from the beginning promoted “submissions which address personal spiritual practices,” have held this crazy spirit within them for years. Now everyone is catching on to the party… but if this Internet is the wildest party yet, who can imagine the future of the Internet?
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