The internet is an incredible resource, despite what neo-luddites like Clifford Stoll may have to say. He's a personal hero of mine, but I disagree with him about the implications of web. I enjoy surfing the web aka the matrix aka information superhighway aka infobahn aka the net. My favorite term of all is "Cyberspace." Here's its source, a bit of pulp that revolutionized the way I see the world:

"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts...A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data, like city lights, receding...."

This was written in 1984. It's from a book called Neuromancer by an American expatriate living in Canada. He is William Gibson.

I've attended two book signings of Mr. Gibson's. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl (a scary thought, really) each time. The first was in 1988, when he was signing Mona Lisa Overdrive. My good pal Chris Greazel was with me. [An aside: Chris is an unrecognized genius living in Orange County, California. You can check out some more of his work if you like. Now, back to my main thread]: It was at this fateful signing that Gibson recommended the book Islands in the Net.

This book, by a crazy-like-a-fox Texan, Bruce Sterling, was and remains astonishing prescient. He's got quite a presence on the net, and for me, his books are a "must-read."

Some years later, I was fortunate enough to have Mr. Sterling sign that copy of Islands, and when I told him of how I found him through Gibson, he recommended Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to me. That book blew me away too. I am always in search of interesting reading. I try to read as much as I can. Reading has been the means of my education.