the net has no geographic boundaries

[cellio]

Several years ago I wrote an article (for an SCA newsletter) on how to build a yurt (aka ger), the portable Mongolian structure. This article found its way onto the web, so every now and then I receive email with feedback or questions.

The latest such message comes from a school teacher who has been having his seventh-grade class build model yurts every year, and after reading my article he thought "why not a real one?". He was writing to me for advice on using local materials (bamboo) in the construction.

This piqued my curiosity. His domain name ended in ".mm", which is unfamiliar to me. To the Google-mobile, batman!

Ok, a group of seventh-graders in Myanmar might build a bamboo yurt based on my instructions.

I don't know why, but I think this is cool.

Comments

[xthlcm.livejournal.com]

I was going to make a tasteless joke about local bamboo and political prisoners in Myanmar. But I won't.

Very, very cool. :)

I had a "gosh, the Internet is pretty frigging cool" moment the other day too. I was sick and bored and surfing Wikipedia. It made me think about when I was a kid. I used to spend rainy days just randomly reading the 23-volume World Book Encyclopedia, jumping across cross-references and soaking up useless facts like an 8-year-old-shaped sponge. I loved that encyclopedia.

I realized that I was doing the exact same thing with Wikipedia, only the information was constantly updated, it was extensively hyperlinked, it was collected and published via a totally organic volunteer process, and my parents didn't pay $500 for it. That pretty much floored me.

[cellio]

That's pretty cool about the Wikipedia. Now that you mention it, I used to browse our encyclopedia in that way when I was a kid, too. Haven't done that on paper in a long time, but hypertext makes browsing very easy.