Spring-cleaning

I spring-cleaned most of my house this weekend. All that`s left is the kitchen and the study. Granted, those are probably the two places where the most clutter has accumulated, but the glistening of the rest of the house more than makes up for my dread of the two remaining rooms.

The feeling of achievement was so great that I cleaned out my car, and sometime this week, I`m even thinking of tackling my desk. This enthusiasm for order has left my brain feeling uncluttered and I am strongly resisting anything that introduces chaos into my life.

In much the same way as I am trying to ignore my two remaining messy rooms, I am trying to stay away from most of the Internet. There are my daily news and technology sites that I visit, which are successful because of their devotion to maintaining the highest standards of order, but other than that, I find the Internet an extraordinarily disorganised place.

When it first took off, there was a great deal of rah-rah about freedom of information, and unrestricted access. But, as with any anarchic system, not only the erudite among us were attracted to this information playground. Anyone who had a modem could throw up some piece of drivel masquerading as a Web site. Every company in the world was instructed that doing business without a Web presence was like winking in the dark. Every pimply, visually illiterate teenager who knew his way around a piece of HTML code set himself up in his mother`s garage and called himself a Web developer.

If you try to search the Internet, you find yourself immersed in garbage.

Georgina Guedes, editor, Brainstorm

The result? Chaos. If you try to search the Internet, you find yourself immersed in garbage. Sites have broken links, badly spelt children`s school projects masquerade as real information, pages have moved to heaven knows where, porn sites use invisible headers to pretend to be reference pages - it`s a mess.

And possibly some would argue that`s the beauty of the Internet. Scrabbling around for information and finding the gem that you are looking for is kind of like scrabbling across a diamond in a scratch-patch. But realistically, I don`t have the time for this nonsense. I need the information I want at my fingertips. I find it frustrating, and I`m pretty good at searching.

What the Internet needs is a governing standards body. Everyone who wants to put their waffle on the Net should have to pass it through a rigorous series of tests to ensure it matches international benchmarks. Sites that aren`t updated monthly will lose their rating.

I`m not suggesting that a panel of industry watchdogs police every citizen`s ability to put information online. Instead, sites that have achieved a rating will be cordoned off in an "authenticated" area of the Web, while those that aren`t can roam wild in the Rogue Internet. Google users could choose Rogue or Authenticated when conducting a search, so that access will not be denied to children`s projects on big cats, or the outdated site of the home industry shop down the road, should anyone want to access these.

This appeals to my current sense of order. Of course, as my household`s tidiness wanes (despite the best of intentions) clutter and chaos with regain their appeal, and I will once again groove with the fragmented bedlam that is the Internet.