...
"It's part of what I call the rise of the miscellaneous," he writes in an email."The net makes available a practical infinity of small bits that we can then sort through just about any way we want to.
The big benefits are that we now can shape our world more closely around our genuine interests (as opposed to having to rely upon the guesses made by editors of various sorts) and we can discover rich relationships that enhance the meaningfulness of things and our understanding of them.
"The big disadvantage is that we get lost all the .
.
.
time," Weinberger continues.
"It's artificial befuddlement, but we're being befuddled by abundance.
That strikes me as better than never being able to lose your way because there's such a scarcity of ways to go."
In my opinion, wilfing has all the earmarks of a trend, the kind that gets discussed on talk shows and endlessly in blogs.
Here's how I see the pop-cult arc of wilfing: First, wilfing appears as a keyword on the blog search website, Technorati.com.
Then someone will write Wilfing for Dummies.
A few weeks later, watch for the Time magazine cover story "Wilfing: A danger to your sex life?
" along with a special report by Dr Sanjay Gupta on CNN.
Oprah will then have a show featuring those who are in "wilf recovery" programs.
Larry King will interview two congressmen in a tight election race wh...
Read more...