[Donk]

Have you ever looked something up in an encyclopaedia, then had your eye drawn to a neighbouring entry about something entirely different? Which leads on to something else, then something else...

We were idly listening to Classic FM the other evening when an ad came on.

"That's the Mr Benn theme tune, isn't it?" she said.

"I'm pretty sure it isn't," I replied, but couldn't remember the Mr Benn theme when she challenged me. We bickered about it for a while, then I opened up the trusty laptop. A few clicks later, it's playing Mr Benn - totally different tune

"So what is that advert tune then?" she asked.

Unfortunately, you can't (yet) whistle a few notes at a computer and ask it to Name That Tune, and we couldn't remember what company was being advertised. We waited for the ad to come round again, googled the name (Autotrader), and within seconds had the answer. The Flumps!

On to Youtube for the Flumps theme. That led us to Camberwick Green, Chigley, Bagpuss, Trumpton, Pigeon Street, the Clangers, the Magic Roundabout... a couple of hours of retro kids' TV reminiscence, a no-holds-barred fight over whether the Flumps were better than the Wombles... our evening of classical music turned into something very different and much more fun.

That's what the internet is doing to our lives now. The old encyclopaedia game with the extra dimensions of colour, pictures, moving images, sound. And we're the very FIRST generation able to do these magical things.

That's real wealth, far beyond any bank balance or GNP statistics!

[freeztar]

I agree Donk. I think we take it for granted a lot of times that we have an enormous repository of wealth available to us in the form of information.

I've often wondered if I will see the day where libraries become defunct and are replaced by free print shops that have dozens of servers in the building, with all the 'books' in the world.

[Turtle]

My main source of reading material when I was a little kid was an encyclopedia and I was like...er...well...was a child in a candy shop. Now with the internet, that shop's expanded to a veritable Willy Wonka chocolate factory and I'm in stuffing my pie-hole like Augustus Gloop. Ya gonna eat that Unique Opportunity, or not?

[DougF]

Turtle
My main source of reading material when I was a little kid was an encyclopedia and I was like...er...well...was a child in a candy shop.

I agree 100% with you, when I was a wee little lad their were three Chanel's on the telly, and all of those wonderfully volumes of the encyclopedia (I can still remember the door to door salesman trying to sell us the newest addition).
It was a good time when most all of your learning was done face to face.

Yes, the World is a deferent place now,
all of the information of the world is now at your fingertips and at a much faster pace then I would have thought possible,

What do you want to learn today?
it's all just a click away.