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The Internet is, in a word, vast. There are not millions but billions of pages out there, and at least one of them must have just the piece of information you're looking for. So how do you sort through all of that overwhelming bounty of information to get just the information you're looking for?

Enter Google. Used well, the search engine with the plain white homepage can quite literally bring a world of information to your fingertips. Used poorly, though, and Google can make you yearn for the days of card catalogs and harried librarians.

Write anywhere. That’s the promise of Google's new service, Google Documents (or "Google Docs" for short). Born out of Google's acquisition of the online word processor Writely, Google Docs is an amazing example of how the Web can transform our lives in ways we couldn't imagine even 5 years ago. I mean, it's a word processor - a full-featured, easy-to-use word processor - and it's *online*, available from any computer with Internet access, any time you want. For free.

Originally published in three parts in 2000 at Suite 101 when I was the editor of their Jewish-American History section. That section disappeared in a subsequent re-design of the site. This is a compilation of those pieces, edited to improve the flow as a single essay.

I am often surprised by the scorn that the term "postmodern" (and its variations) meets with, both in academia and in the general population. I find that "postmodern" is a term that is "bandied about" quite a bit without much substance or conviction behind it, in much the same way that a secularist like myself will yell out "Damn you!" without actually considering him- or her- or myself to be imploring a vengeful deity to consign one's interlocutor to Hell.

I have a strong interest in ideas of space and place. Whether it's the use of places as sites of memory and memorialization, the construction of spaces for expression and community, or the mapping of different sorts of activities onto the social landscape, my interest is always sparked by the ways people think of and use physical and metaphorical space.

I wasn't going to write about the new Matrix film here. I've been posting comments to some of the discussions of the film around the blogosphere, but didn't feel I had enough to say to make it worth a post of my own. But it's a funny thing--certain ideas kept reprocessing, some of my earlier sureties about the movie have come under question, and I find myself admiring the movie a lot more today than I did when I saw it 10 days ago.

(Follow-up to Things My Language Told Me To Say )

There is a debate going on at several blogs (starting at EmptyBottle and continuing at the heart of things , akma’s random thoughts , commonplaces , Ming the Mechanic , Ep

I saw X-Men 2 on Friday, not so much because I’m a big fan of the X-Men (I don’t really read comic books) but because I love seeing “event movies” like this on opening night–there’s such a charge from all the hard-core fans and the interaction with the movie.