The Internet is not just the information superhighway (earth) or surfing the web (water), but about air (instant communication) and fire (illumination of mind & spirit).
The Internet is a mindplace for spiritual communion and celebration. Lao Tzu says “The net of heaven is cast wide” (Tao Te Ching, LXXIII) and the word “inter” may be interpreted as “between terra” so that Internet is “between earth & heaven.” In the spirit of the Internet, let us make this class one of cooperation and inspiration, helping and sharing with each other our learnings as we transmute global knowledge to universal wisdom. May joyous discovery awaken us as we soar into the infinite.
Internet Metaphors
Vice President Al Gore said the “Internet is the information superhighway.”
In his Second Inaugural (1-20-97), President Clinton used two metaphors when
he said: “Ten years ago, the Internet was the mystical province of physicists.
Today it is a commonplace encyclopedia for millions of school children.”
Aristotle said (Poetics, Book XXII) that a poet must "have a command
of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark
of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances."
Copy & paste definitions for "metaphor" and "simile" along with
two examples from the website
A Glossary of Literary Terms to your Word document.
You may bookmark this web page for future reference.
Find this quote in the
Washington Post archive by using "Find in Page" (Command-F) in the Edit menu.
Type "Internet" in the Find box and check Wrap Search. Click the Find button to
verify the above quote. Copy the quote to your Word document along with the URL
(web address) for reference.
Start thinking about some original Internet metaphors of your own. Write them down
in your notebook. Submit them to me by July 8 so I'll compile an “Internet metaphor”
list for class handouts on July 10.
Tim invented the World Wide Web in late 1990 while working at CERN, the European Particle
Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote the first WWW client (a browser-editor running
under NeXTStep) and the first WWW server along with most of the communications software,
defining URLs, HTTP and HTML. Prior to his work at CERN, Tim was a founding director of Image
Computer Systems, a consultant in hardware and software system design, real-time communications
graphics and text processing, and a principal engineer with Plessey Telecommunications in Poole,
England. He is a graduate of Oxford University. Tim is now the overall Director of the W3C.
He is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. What is Berners-Lee's email address? What is his office address? Download Berners-Lee's one-page personal
history of the web that he wrote on May 7, 1998 from his Short Bio page. Read it for homework. 29 MacArthur fellowships were announced on
June 11, 1998. Go to the
MacArthur Foundation website and find out his award citation and prize money. In what issue of Time magazine did
the article "The Man Who Invented the Web" appear? Go to
Time's website at www.pathfinder.com/time and enter "Tim Berners-Lee" in the Search box. Hit
the "go" button. You'll find 24 articles but none on Tim Berners-Lee. Why? Because the database is for
the last month only. Click the "all" button on the bottom of the search result page and hit "go" button.
This time you'll find the article as hit #1 of 393 documents. Try entering "Tim+Berners-Lee"
to see how many results you get. (You should get only 4 documents from the entire archive and
0 hits from the last month).
George Washington Goethals (1858-1928) was born on June 29, 1858, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He graduated from West Point (1880). In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as chief engineer to construct the Panama Canal. Supervising over 30,000 workers, he completed the project six months ahead of schedule in 1914 at a cost of $367 million. President Roosevelt, said it was "the greatest task of its own kind that has ever been performed in the world." United States pays rent to the Panama and will yield control to the Panamanians in the year 2000. Goethals remained as governor of the Canal Zone until 1916, when he retired from the army.
Answer these questions from the web page
Panama Canal: Excellence in Engineering:
How long is the Panama Canal? How many ships pass through per year? "A man, a plan, a canal— Panama!"
is my favorite palindrome, a word or sentence that reads the same forward & backward.
Other examples include: "No lemons, no melon" and "Was it a cat I saw?" Visit the
Palindrome Home Page
and click to the "Simple palindromes" page. Copy and paste five palindromes you like
to your Word document.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) was born on June 29, 1900 in Lyons, France.
He wrote poetic narratives about aviation in Night Flight (1931), Wind, Sand,
and Stars (1939). He's best known as the author of The Little Prince (1943),
a beautiful tale for children and adults. He was lost in combat action in World War II.
Visit The Little Prince
website to read an English edition of the book with beautiful drawings by the author.
Answer these questions from the website:
What was the drawing he did as a child
which the adults thought was a hat? (Ch. 1)
What little planet (asteroid) did the Little Prince come from? (Ch. 4)
