Moments in Time

I did not fully understand this article written by freelance writer Wayne Curtis who writes for the Atlantic Monthly. In his article "Weni, Widi, Wiki," about his four-day to Seattle. The twist is that he uses information from various social network websites that allow people to write about their trips, what are good restaurants, which hotel is best to stay during the trip. In the article he lists the websites he used to prepare for this trip instead of just venturing on his own. He depended on random internet users.

After reading this article, I'm not sure what to say about it. In other words I don't know the purpose of why the writer wrote this. As I read, he mentioned different sites that he used to plan the trip and even the hotel he would say for the time in Seattle. TripAdvisor.com, 43places.com, Chowhound.com, are some of the sites listed on the page that he used as a guide for the unfamiliar city. You can't really trust what people write on websites or how they rate hotels. Overall, it is mostly opinions from users; either take it or leave it.

I will assume that he wrote the article to inform that relying on social networking sites can be good whereas you will not experience what you have read. Some of the remarks were good and others were terrible. I can't imagine using the Internet as a guide for a trip. To me, it serves the purpose of planning out a trip and finding where you should stay and what recreation activities are good for the family. The subtitle of the article is "our correspondent visits Seattle with only the hive mind of the Internet as his guide." This is an article about travel in the Critics section.

In some way this is like that Google article either in this publication or Harper's. The way the article is structure or written is up the author and how we respond after have read what he written. I did enjoy reading this article.