| July. 26. 2000 meta- != super- "meta-" = "in composition, above, beyond, after, later" "super-" = "in composition, above, beyond, in addition, in excess, very" Close, but not the same. "Meta" is the meme spawned and fostered by the very hyper-texted nature of the web. I'm not talking aboaut html meta-tags, I'm talking about the basic human propensity to compile link lists, the desire to filter, the desire to order, the desire to get a handle on things, the desire to see the big picture, the desire to have the last word. Did you add my link list to your list of link lists? How meta-meta. Did someone else add your list of link lists to their list of lists of link lists? How meta-meta-meta. The goal, then, of all web pundits, is to be the one most meta. Did you read my commentary on someone else's commentary? Do you have a commentary about it? Why of course you do. Post your commentary on your blog, wait two weeks, and someone will add a link to your meta-meta-comentary to their own blog (replete with their own "fresh" commentary of course) and you've just been fiendishly out-meta-ed. Want to join the mayhem? This article seeks to have the last word on the meta-phenomenon. Link to this article, add your own comments, and you are now even further removed than I. How freaking perspicacious of you, and all accomplished via a simple "href" tag and a short text blurb. "super-", however, is a whole 'nother prefix. Whereas "meta-" means you've got the outside perspective on something, "super-" implies that your outside perspective is qalitatively superior to someone else's outside perspective. Metaman climbed the hill and looked around. Superman climbed the hill, rhetoricized metaman off the hill, and then constructed a super-mall on the hill, replete with its own 50-foot lookout tower. To err is human; to forgive is divine. To link is meta-; to hierarchize, engender, and properly re-align is super-. So... is this article super-meta, or is it merely meta-meta? Whichever you decide, simply tack "meta-" onto that, and that's what your opinion is. That last sentence was a meta-critique of your yet to be written meta-critique of this article -- an article which is itself a meta-commentary on all things meta-. "It's like trying to unwravel a giant turtle-necked sweater that someone keeps knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and ...." - Dr. Herman
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