Clueless in cyberspace

I liked this "Monty" strip that ran last week, but I'm not so sure about this article from C/Net news. It seems that, when AOL coughed up the search records of its customers recently, it was possible to piece together what various (anonymous) individuals have been searching for on AOL's own search engine.

Now, granted that AOL users don't have a reputation for being cybersavvy -- and if you eliminate the ones who would have used Google or even Yahoo! as their search engine of choice, you're not really providing a cross-section of the surfing public.

But still. The topics are amusing or depressing or alarming, yes, but the search terms ... do these people think the Internet is a Magic Eight Ball?

Nonsense. The Internet is not a Magic Eight Ball. It's a series of tubes.