Ant Hill Theory

Early in the science of internet technologies engineers discovered what they called "The Ant Hill Theory". Simply, this theory states that everyone entering the internet is sort of like a colony of individuals trying to move through a maze with all of the other individuals present, arriving and departing and trying to do it as fast as they can, and are using an ant-based computer model to help you get to your destination faster. 

How do ants find the route to a food source? All each ant does is to follow the strongest pheromone (chemical) trail left by other ants. If this process is repeated frequently enough, they will find the best route through trial and error. If ants become isolated from their group, they end up running around in circles, following their own pheromone trail until they die of exhaustion. This behavior, called "swarm intelligence" describes how complex behavior can arise from a large number of individuals each following very simple rules. Bees use swarm intelligence to cluster and disperse about the hive.

All this means is that the "FIRST" node on the internet grows larger simply because it was the first. Out of this is the "next" largest node, or site, then another. The largest ones soon become the "A" list, not because what they offer in content is the best, but because it is the "Biggest" node, or site.

Gone are the daze of BlogStreet, Crimson Blog, or Weblog dot com where every few hours new blog postings were updated on their list, and a lurker could  Dig way down to the bottom to find really interesting stuff that different ppl were blogging about.

No, today everone is just another Ant in the Ant farm, and soon the internet will be packaged in such a way that computer users will buy packaged farms just like they do cable TV. If only ppl could have taken the time to follow the path less traveled(Robert Frost), and learned to dig way deep. Then maybe they could have discovered a pound of gold on their way to virtual reality.