Is the Internet More Vital Than Water?

Not for everyone, of course — Brock Lesnar, for instance, doesn’t go near the Internet.

But as mobile browsing is fast becoming a reality, I love watching how people use the Internet to shape their lives in ways large and small. Here are a pair of interesting examples. Granted, both of these fall into the “small” category:

1. A web site called Better Than the Van, which is building a community of free places to stay for touring bands. The idea is that music fans can offer up their homes as crash pads. As someone who used to drive around the country in a van playing clubs with my band, worried about having enough gas money to make it to the next town — when gas was a bit cheaper than now — I was always very happy to find a free place to stay instead of a Motel 6 or Cricket Inn. (Unfortunately, the free places were often even grodier than the motels.)

2. A site called Get Drunk Cheap, founded by three Univ. of Michigan engineering students, which “compiles beer prices from the campus area of Ann Arbor to help you find the best deals in town!” Here’s more from Hani, one of the students:

We currently have about eight stores and their prices and will have close to 20 total within two weeks before school starts. We started the site because we realized a significant amount of college students drink and at the same time like to save money. If [we're] successful, our goal is to expand to other campuses. We are also going to talk to local bars and beer stores to see if they would like to advertise on our site.

There may well be significant overlap between the users of these two sites. They have a couple of other things in common too: they both encourage more miles driven at a time when overall miles are falling; and they might also lead to the sort of trouble that gives liability lawyers a lot of business. But a little bit of risk is what makes the world exciting, no?