Allure Of The Unknown Web Address

I passed a billboard on the side of the highway. It was mostly blank, but it had a single web address in the center of the board. These types of billboards and advertisements have been climbing into our lives in recent years, and finally I have gotten to wondering.

When I see the simple signs with nothing but a web address, I impulsively want to go check out the website. I don’t know if I’m the only one with this knee-jerk reaction, but I am going to assume that I am not. Not every website advertised intrigues me, but the ones with quirky names that sound interesting or relevant to me (even though they might not be), the ones that I can’t possibly imagine what they are for, or the ones that might just be the next cool thing, those are the signs that draw this impulse from me. Strangely, I know from experience that more often than not the websites just are leading to more ads and nothing that I am particularly interested in. In fact, if they look too mainstream, as if perhaps designed by a major company (you can usually tell these ones because they show up in too many places), I have almost no inclination to go to the website. Still, I think even then I have a tiny desire to check out the site, if only to confirm that I am not interested.

Why do I have this attraction to the unknown website?

Well, as I think about it, I postulate that perhaps it is because the web is still being explored and built. One still has the chance to stumble upon something really cool and new, something that could change the way you live (like Google Maps did) or at least something you can tell your friends about at the next party.

So let’s go back into history a bit. When the telephone was still a new technology and not everyone was quite comfortable with it yet, would people have responded to the posting of a random and unknown telephone number the way I do to random unknown web addresses?

If the phone number was just posted as digits, I would guess that people would simply ignore it, similar to the way we’d react to some nonsensical alpha-numeric web address like ‘j2hlh8m79yd6h.com ‘ (Note: This address was made up for the sake of illustrating my point, if this address was / is / becomes a functioning web address, the association is accidental). However, if the phone number was displayed in alphabetical form and was (800) I – RELISH (or some different and more clever name), would people have wanted to check it out? Maybe they’d want to just give it a call and see who answers? I know that today I wouldn’t be interested at all in the random unknown phone number. Then again, the phone is so commonplace and frequently used that it actually feels like a burden to call someone new. I wonder if the internet will ever become that way.