References

When you think about it, links are really the essential feature of the internet, what sets it apart, and what makes it fabulous. Rarely are nice pages found by entering a random URL: we always need someone to link us to the discovery, whether it is in an ad or on a blog or other page. If the link is on another web page or blog -especially on a blog- odds are the person who put it there wouldn't have "discovered" that page without a link to it.

As such, giving credit where credit is even harder than with academic papers, because it's not just ideas that travel, it's URL's. I can mention where I found the link, but most of the time it is impossible to trace back who we should really mention for finding the thing in the first place. This is especially true with items such as the Shining trailer I linked to in an earlier post: at least three sites I regularly visit linked to it, and if you search for "Shining trailer" through the Google blogsearch, you see just how incestuous the blogosphere can be.

The only thing people can do, really, is to make a selection from among the hundreds, thousands of links they discover, a selection that then adds to the hundreds another has seen, and so on, until the genealogy of a certain reference is impossible to trace.

Despite all these arguments, I would like here to give a list of the sites I find most of my links, of the websites and blogs I visit very often to see what they've discovered for me.

Metafilter
Arts & Letters Daily
Movie City News
Geek Philosophy
Cinematical

There are more, of course, and many links are found by clicking through several pages...but I'd say these five form the core.

H.