Fast food vs. DIY.

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We live in a culture of conflicting metaphors. On the one hand we're told that it makes more sense (and even economic sense) to put the family into the car and drive over to a fast food restaurant for dinner. The meal may end up being less expensive, and certainly less time consuming, than were we to stay at home and prepare a meal and clean up afterwards. On the other hand, our society places great value on doing things ourselves. It's assumed that if we stay at home and cook our meal we'll achieve greater quality than we would going the fast food route.

The web offers us the possibility of doing something ourselves - and making what we've prepared public, which in turn makes it all the easier for us not to do things on our own, since as more and more materials are available for us to use, there's less and less reason to devote the effort needed to do things on our own. Perhaps the two aren't even as contradictory as they might originally seem.

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Go to: No need to do it yourself, or
Go to: Inventing wheels in cyberspace.