Every day, I’m amazed by the information ecosystem that we call the WWW and how it has changed forever the way we educate ourselves.
Today’s illustration. I spent part of last weekend strolling through the beautiful rainforest of Brisbane Forest Park, a mere hour’s drive from the city. On the track at Maiala I heard a very bizarre noise, high in the misty canopy. The sound was a blend of fighting cats and crying children, yet strangely musical. It was a new sound to me but the cat-like aspect was a give-away, since I was aware of a species called the green catbird.
Back at home, I consulted the trusty Simpson and Day’s Birds of Australia. It described a sound similar to what I had heard but of course, bird sounds don’t translate to written English very well. So I headed off to the appropriate Wikipedia entry. It’s not one of the more compehensive pages but in the external links includes:
I played the sound – it was exactly what I had heard. What’s more the page is tagged, geotagged and part of a wonderful resource called the Freesound project – a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds.
So in the space of a few hours I lifted my spirits in the great outdoors, heard something new, tracked it down on the Web and discovered a bunch of new, interesting related information. That’s the Web at its best; integrating seamlessly with your daily life to enhance what you see around you. When it works, it’s an almost Zen-like experience.
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate 