Wisdom of the Web

In this past week's issue of The New Yorker, Katha Pollitt (of Mother Jones fame) writes about tracking her ex-boyfriend online after he walked out on their seven-year relationship. She uses her personal experience to write, wonderfully non-judgmentally, about what the Web has done to enhance our ability to find out about people, and yet how unsatisfying and even surrealistic that information can be. There's plenty of humor (she unexpectedly gets an online view of his new sweetie's apartment, complete with some of their old furnishings) and wisdom. If someone asks me in 25 years what the Web was like in the "olden days," I'll pull out this article.