Web Usage Pattern: Multiple, Long Tangential Conversations

The barrier that is lifted when you're a skilled web user is enormous. When answers to questions are available within seconds, one is able to follow long trains of thought without worrying about losing the main thrust of your research. Following hyperlinked text leaves a trail of crumbs that can be followed back home at any time, whenever the particular diversion is exhausted.

Before the internet, researchers had to be more selective with their sources. Internet research enables for deeper investigation into matters that would be deemed not worth the cost in traditional research. One can only read so many books, particularly when you must physically locate each one first. Freed from this burden, internet researchers can follow flights of fancy without worrying about wasting much time. If something is there, it can be quickly identified and followed up upon; if not, little time is lost.

Because of this acceleration, patterns of how we conduct research are entirely different. You might click on a related link, and follow related links until you forget what you were studying previously. But you can easily trace back using your history, or by maintaining multiple windows. The result is a pattern very similar to a spiders web. Starting from the middle, working around, and following long diverging strings outwards. Linkages between concepts far from the centre are important for holding the whole structure together; but the inner rings are what enable the outer rings to exist in the first place.

That metaphor may be both a stretch and a cliche, but undoubtedly the web enables a kind of research not possible before. It is a kind of pattern recognition at a much higher level. Traditional research focused on containing scope-- limiting the question and suggesting broad, universal importance. Current research, by virtue of the accelerated environment, can cover both broader scope and broader universality. The "Further Questions" section can be lengthy and ambitious, because the easy questions could all be answered.