The Arc of Joan
By Michael Swaine
We have, it seems, reached a watershed. A watershed is a parting of waters, a ridge line dividing two drainage areas—like the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains, from which every river must choose its ultimate Pacific or Atlantic destiny.
We've crossed to the other side of Gender Ridge. According to the Strategis Group, there are now officially as many women as men online. (See for yourself at www.strategisgroup.com/press/pubs/iut.html.) Up here near the crest, the waters are just a trickle compared to what they'll be later. The relentless womanward rush that awaits downstream isn't yet apparent at this elevation, where the Internet dot-comedy currents are free to noodle around in seemingly aimless, fractally meandering IPO streams. It'll take time for this flood of women to percolate through the Internet's thirsty soil, but soon the trickle will become a raging torrent.
Sorry about that metaphor. It got away from me. Happens sometimes because I refuse to dam the rhetoric flow by installing the necessary logic pipes for fear of drowning some spawning insight, leaping upstream against the current of...
The point is, something is different now, and it's gonna get way differenter. First, of course, the analysts will have to decide how to visualize it for us. As Plato said, the unexamined life is not worth living, by which he meant that no social phenomenon is real until it's a USA Today graphic.
The trend-trackers, charting each Netchick uptick, will mark this critical crossover point.
