************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** There's a paradox called Grelling's Paradox that I think plays itself out on the web every time you forego a search engine and punch in a domain like www.recipes.com, hoping it comes up with content suggested by the domain name. Borrowing terms used by Douglas Hofstadter in his book /Godel, Escher, Bach/, we can divide domain names into two types: autological domains (domain names that describe their content) and heterological domains (domain names that don't describe their content). For example, food.com is an autological domain because it resolves to a site about food. The aforementioned recipes.com is heterological because it resolves to a site selling fancy domain names, not recipes. Makes sense, right? The paradox comes in when you punch in www.heterological.com. How would you classify this site? If the content describes the URL, say it's a list of other heterological domain names, then heterological.com is autological. But autological content would ultimately make this site heterological, since heterological.com implies the content has nothing to do with the domain name. This of course makes the whole site autological again... Working it the other way, we encounter the same problem of classification. If the content is just a list of porn sites, then the heterological.com domain name doesn't imply the contents. Hey, that's autological! We're back to the same problem. A heterological.com domain that is autological becomes heterological again which makes it autological which then makes it heterological... Every time you try to classify heterological.com as autological or heterological, you have to reclassify it. It's an endless regression. Thankfully no one has registered heterological.com. I'm certain my browser (Explorer 4.0) would crash in the most spectacular way. Everything else seems to make it crash. Safe from the fear of stumbling on www.heterological.com, one can sometimes have fun punching in various domain names and seeing what comes up. What becomes rapidly apparent, a number of cool domains that should be autological were gobbled up by some pretty dull programmer types back in 1995. They're likely sitting on them hoping to get rich when a megacorporation decides the Next Big Thing can be sold under the domain name gimpy.com. www.freaky.com This site promises "All freaks. All the time." What you get is a front end to some home pages that aren't freaky at all. Just some poetry by e e cummings (which hasn't been considered freaky poetry for a couple decades) and some links to Linux pages (which is no longer considered a freaky operating system). Geeks, you know? www.boring.com One could have some fun with a site at boring.com but it's in use by an office supply company called Boring Business Systems. The site is autological on so many levels. The name, the industry, and the page design are dull. The site at boring.org also seems to be true to form. The site seems to be in transition, however the web master promises boring.org will soon feature something interesting. I can't wait. www.sick.com I hesitated visiting this site for fear it would have a bunch of photos of road kill and things removed from human bodies. Luckily, it turned out to be a site featuring links to medical information. If you're really looking for blood and guts, the page at www.rotten.com fits the bill. www.silly.com There's only two silly things about this site. One, that an employment recruiter sees some need to associate his business with this domain name. Two, the page plays some very silly music: Hall and Oates' "Maneater". Is this the kind of person you want finding a job for you? www.funny.com You might find this a funny site. You can select jokes based on categories, ranging from classic knock knock jokes to the newly emerging "Yo Mama" form. You can also set a rating, from G- to X-rated. You'll be more than happy to know the database of jokes is empty of X-rated lawyer jokes. I suppose the profession is obscene enough. www.useless.com This page admits it's useless. It's primarily just two banner ads. However, it does provide a useful link to an amusing page featuring biting satire about useless web pages. www.godot.com This is one domain name you kind of wish doesn't resolve. Unfortunately, you don't have to wait for godot.com.