[Air-l] my second post

[Eero Tarik]

thanks to those who replied to my first post both on list and off it, I 
enjoyed reading your responses.

I suppose deep down I must be a Lord Kelvin man - for those who don't 
remember the 1890's, he wrote...

"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express
it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot
measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your
knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the
beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts,
advanced to the stage of science. "

So with this in mind, I put to you the following numbers and observations...

a Google search reveals that the term "cyberspace" appears 2.4million 
times in the online world.
Identity appears 14 million times, gender 15 million times, politics 26 
million and race 32 million.

God appears 64 million times and love gets 119 million mentions - far 
more important to "cyberspacers" than food, which is only mentioned 86 
million times.

Interestingly, the internet produces 244 million results, but lags 
behind good old "sex" with 269 million and business with 266 million..

And at the top of my little list is the search term, "help" which comes 
in with 301 million results.

When I look at the kind of subject matter that appears to be the focus 
of internet researchers I am dismayed that so much of the intellectual 
effort seems to be directed at the small end of town. There appears to 
be an over emphasis upon cyberspace and cyberism, along with identity, 
gender, race and politics.

A search of the titles of the papers presented to last years conference 
shows that 11 contained the term cyberspace, 32 contained the term 
identity, 12 contained gender, and 2 contained race -  none contained 
the term "help".

The online world, it seems, is screaming out for help - 301million 
times, yet academia appears to want  to talk about minority issues.

The online world wants help, sex and business - academia gives it 
cyberspace and discussion of race, gender and politics.

Am I missing something???

Dont you just love numbers :-)

see ya
Eero Tarik
Adelaide, South Australia