I love the way the web has unleashed the power of words. Here's an example of how this works: I am going to stop writing for two minutes and explore an idea about which I currently have very little knowledge...say the archaeology of buttons. Be back in a minute...

...Wow! Who knew that so many people have written about the historical influence of buttons? In just a few minutes I learned something completely new, due to the fact that someone wrote about it and put it on the web! Archaeological information has been available in books, magazines, and scholarly papers in university libraries everywhere. However, without the web, that's where it would stay. On the web, I can access these words from my computer while listening to music and working on my newsletter.

The web makes words instantly, immediately, and readily accessible. The vast amount of available and accessible words requires another marvelous invention...the search engine. Search engines make it possible for me to discover all this available information. When an archeology professor publishes a paper about a dig containing some interesting buttons, it's no longer read only by his students. Five years later, I read it on my computer screen after taking just 20 seconds to do a Google search.

Of course, pictures are available online too. In fact, I saw some interesting images of historic buttons as I did my mini-research. But here's why words trump pictures: I only found the pictures because someone wrote WORDS to describe it...either in the image's "ALT" tag or in a caption pertaining to the image. If it wasn't for the words associated with the image, I would never have found it on the web. So at least in this regard, words have more potential power on the web than images.   next >