Thursday, July 27, 2006

Through The Looking Glass

My mother used to take me along when she visited an old lady down a cobbled lane who had a crystal ball on her dining room table and a pack of playing cards. My mother was superstitious and really believed a lot of what she was told by the old lady. She wanted to know what the future held not only for herself but for me, her only little boy. I was about five or six years old at the time, and used to gaze at the reflected images upon the crystal ball of the sunlit window behind me and the lace curtains, although the old lady would place her hands at either side of the crystal ball and say that she could see the future and told of what she saw, I could only see the reflection of that window with the lace curtains. The old lady was either a genuine medium or was just guessing what my mother wanted to hear to keep her coming back for more of the same, and make herself a small income to supplement her pension.
We all of us are seekers of knowledge to enhance our lives and most of us would admit we are a little superstitious but may not believe that anyone could foretell the future. If we really needed to know the future as regards our business, in particular, we would look at 'trends', and facts and figures on charts and graphs, so we may be able to predict where our business is going, we none of us would trust in an old lady with a crystal ball. If we wanted to be successful in business we would arm ourselves with sufficient knowledge to make it happen, and where else to look for knowledge but on the internet where all manner of business books are online, written by experienced business people who have 'been there-done that'.
The internet is the first place people now go to find something out, whether it be for personal use or for business use, for there is a mind-boggling explosion of knowledge on the internet, most of which we are never going to read, simply because we would need to live to 900 years old to be able to find the time and that's supposing no more knowledge gets added in the meantime. In that 900 years, inevitably, a lot of the information will go out of date, so we need to live another 900 years to catch up on the 'updates'. This could go on forever, for there would always be more knowledge coming along we need to keep track of.
Yes, the internet is a wonderful depository of knowledge, the knack of using it to full advantage is to keep trawling and discovering new web sites and then having found some we like, for fresh new content, regular updates, etc., bookmark them in your browser, so you can find them again.
None of us are going to live to 900 years, so we need to maximize our time on the internet, for there are approximately three billion web pages indexed by Google, and more are being added every minute of every day, even while you have been reading this.