As we were chatting last night, I asked him if the number of those parents had gone down, thinking it might be a fad, but he said no. After more discussion, I realized that the combination of good search engines and long-lasting Web content had probably lengthened the amount of time that self-diagnosis fads last because when you hear about something now, it is easy to find material on it even though that material may be many years old. (On the Internet time scale, "many" can mean "five".)
So, the boon of the Internet making important material easier to find long after it is published can also make material that maybe shouldn't be so important just as easy to find for a long time. Fads that some people would like to see die out will last longer, just as positive trends that needed enough people to hear about them will last longer.
Posted by lookit at June 3, 2005 11:41 AM