it's easy to see the symbolism. i mean the quiltmakers use small pieces, although they were joined more tightly: the web is small pieces, loosely joined. but the quiltmakers, and weinberger's look at the web, represent something more significant, more hopeful..."like a world, it is an abiding place where we can accomplish together whatever it is that our caring natures put us up to" (193).

in the same way that the web is beyond time and space, the quilts are equally free from such constraints. for generations, quilt-making traditions have been passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter; many of the depression-era quilts are still around. the threading of time and space, much like the process that connects patchwork pieces of cloth and fabric, allows individual readers to making their own meaning. so, when i look at those quilts from my 2005 perspective, they will have a different meaning than that of my 1997, pre-graduate work self. in my mind, i'll arrange the shapes and patterns according the whatever cognitive frameworks exist. i "order" the quilt in the same way that i "order" my web experience.

in his preface, weinberger asks: "what is true to our nature and what only looked that way because it was a response to a world that was, until now, the only one we had?" (xii). i think about that quote as i make my way thru this blog-mediated environment and continue to look at quilts from gee's bend, alabama. it is reductive to say that the quiltmakers were simply making the best of the merger resources they had. instead, i situate them alongside the web makers, web thinkers, and web users. i'm not concerned about whether or not a community of poor, uneducated african-american women have read saussure, foucalt, bourdieu, or burke. instead, and what is most productive for my reading and understanding of network theory, i choose to focus on how this discourse community was "true" to its nature. if you look ath the quilts hard enough, you will see reflections of racism, oppression, domestic abuse, economic and political powerlessness, and triumph, love, hope, laughter, and strength.

"most of all," reminds weinberger, "the web is a more honest--because unguarded--reflection of what we are like when we seek one another without the limitations the real world imposes on us. it's not always a pretty picture, but it's a hell of a lot more fun than posing in your prom outfit all your life" (194).