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*                                                            *
*                         CYBERSPACE                         *
*         A biweekly column on net culture appearing         *
*                in the Toronto Sunday Sun                   *
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* Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer                                  *
* Free for online distribution                               *
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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.

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