Where the links lead us

This is not an original thought: The wonder of the Internet is how our reading jumps from one place to another in a way that suits our particular way of thinking. I find this a wonderful thing.I started out this morning (Sunday, July 30) on The New York Times reading about a movie called “Half Nelson,” and, within an hour or so, I ended up in a Wikipedia page about English declension, a linguistic concept that explains why we use “who” and “whom” and perhaps why our great-great-grandchildren, if they speak English at all, might not bother with “whom.”

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Between those two pages, I learned a little about dialectics and reacquainted myself with Noam Chomsky. I experienced the warm feeling of nostalgia for the most important course I took at UNC-Greensboro many years ago, an introduction to grammar and linguistics. I briefly explored the route of humans out of Africa.All of this was made possible by the magic of hyperlinks and the miracle of search engines.

This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Co.; is posted here to provide continuity; and is copyright © 2011 The News & Observer Publishing Company, which reserves the right to remove this post.