A Drifter
During my derive experience I found that the internet is a blackhole of information waiting to be consumed.
I started my journey on the Wikipedia page. The page is well organized and bustling with lots of text and little images. The standard Wikipedia logo sits atop the page informing the user of where they are in the vast web that is the internet. I clicked on the Arts tab and journeyed further.
I wandered the pages of Wikipedia for a short time before consuming text became boring. I decided to go to the Bing.com. Bing.com has this great element where they feature something interesting or out of the ordinary. It’s also a similar search engine to Google in its function. I like to think of it as a curiosity machine.
The featured story was about the Kelpies. The Kelpies are thirty meter high horse head statues in Falkirk, Scotland. They were built as a tribute to the country’s horse powered industrial heritage. The statues are beautiful. They have this element where they light up at night and glow these beautiful color arrangements.
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From this page I noticed a link to another monument, the Angel of the North. The twenty meter tall sculpture in England resembles, you guessed it, an angel. I scrolled through some of these photos for a while before thinking about what tourist said about the sculpture. I did some clicking and was able to find some reviews of the sculpture from tourist. Apparently it’s beautiful in person. The steel masterpiece is dazzling to look at in the sunlight.
Drifting back to the Bing search engine I stumbled across a project know as the Eden Project. The Eden Project is located in Cornwall, England. Inside the magnificent domes are plants collected from diverse climates and environments. TripAdvisor.com has a widget installed on this page where those who visited the Eden Project have left reviews. One person stated that they enjoyed the rainforest biome because it closely resembled the rainforest of Asia and South America. They went on to say that they spent two days at the tourist attraction and had the time of their lives.
Apparently the word Eden is diversely used. There is also a band named Eden that I stumbled upon on the Bing search engine. Eden is band based out of Dublin that focuses on electronic music. The lead singer, Johnathon Ng, is an Irish vocalist and music producer. What I specifically enjoyed was the visual media that came along with it. I was really impressed with the overall aesthetic of the music video. Its always inspiring to see underground artist creating media for youtube. Youtube tends to be the place where you find innovation in techniques concerning videography.
One thing I noticed about my journey through the web was the huge degree of similarity between Google and Bing. I decided to do a little experiment to explore the relationship further. I searched the same topic, “Eden Project band,” to see what each engine would consider most relevant. What I noticed was that Google lacked a module explaining the band and its history. Where Bing featured the band at the top of its search with a description and short biography. Perhaps the most popular search engine should be Bing.
