Communication Technology: A Stitch in Time, Part 4

       From the podium for an ancient rhapsode to a modem for an internet surfer seems a long way indeed.  But just as the medieval "rhapsode" of England, called a scop, was spoken of in Beowulf as "the one who wields wide with his words," so the contemporary location of symbolic nexus is the "World Wide Web."  And while we are almost all caught in this "web," we should remember its roots also are "to weave" from Old English wefan.  

        It is nice to contemplate that secret "threads" run between all these different eras.  The weave, the warp and woof (also from wefan) that stitch together the narratives of our people and our people themselves, whether in speech, text, or digital data, these threads intertwine and communicate in metaphoric subtext.  They connect across centuries through the "subtle" ("finest thread") loom of our language.