The strangely-local World-Wide Web

Kilkenny, Ireland, 2002 —

At a time when I was seeing 200 to 500 page-views per month, the pharmacist of somebody I wrote about read about him.

It was an innocuous piece about Dubliners in a Kilkenny pub and somebody I'd just met — a Dubliner himself, a co-worker, commenting aside about them. A few months later his chemist described for him the moment about which I'd written.

Justin didn't mind — and neither did he grasp the strange implication.

I'd simply mentioned in a page on my tiny website a person's name; a pub name; the name of a town; and the terms "dub," "Dublin," and "Dubliner" — and the pharmacist at the other end of Rose Inn Street found it.

That's how local the internet can be.