At a time when political candidates are decrying the violence and sexual climate of the country, it can be instructive to look back at the tales and legends of ancient cultures for a little context.

Take Greece, for example, and the fable of Tereus, the wicked king of Thrace, who after marrying Procne, the daughter of the king of Athens, proceeded to rape Procne's sister, Philomela. Already we're onto far more sordid fare than today's average political scandal.

But Tereus didn't stop there. Fearing Philomela would tell her sister, he tried to ensure her silence by cutting out her tongue - we're talking real violence here - and locking her up. But Philomela cleverly revealed the crime to her sister by weaving a tell-tale account of her rape into a tapestry - a ploy Sophocles later celebrated as "the voice of the shuttle," referring to the shuttle bobbin that carries thread through a loom.

Sophocles' "voice of the shuttle" interpretation of this ancient, albeit gruesome, fable and parable speaks to the modern world. In fact, it is a metaphor for the Internet, which weaves information into new revelations and forms of understanding that the media and world at large perhaps neglect or even actively discourage. And that's why one of the best Web sites of which you've probably never heard calls itself "The Voice of the Shuttle."

Just About Everything

When you arrive at The Voice of the Shuttle home page, you first see the 26 major categories of information you can browse - everything from General Humanities Resources and Cultural Studies to Cyberculture and Postindustrial Business Theory.

The creator of the site is Professor Alan Liu at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has compiled a mammoth, intelligently chosen collection of links, with brief explanations of the sites or pages to which they lead.

Because space is limited in this column, I'll take just one of those categories - Cyberculture - and tease out a portion of its content. "Cyberculture" is divided into 20 subsections, each with a unique collection of relevant links: General Resources (33 links); Projects, Sites (57); Writings, Interviews (109); Cybercensorship (22); Cyberethics & Cyberlaw (41); Politics of the Net (13); Economics of the Net (6); Cybergender & Techgender (34); Cyberpunk Fiction (18); Business & Technology (16); History of Computing & Computer Museums (21); Hypertext Research (76); Hypermedia Research (13); Interface Theory (11); Artificial Life, Artificial Intelligence, Complexity Studies, Robotics, Nanotech (130); Organizations, Centers, Programs (11); Course Syllabi & Teaching Resources (45); Journals & Zines (29); Listservs & Newsgroups (6); and Conferences & Calls for Papers (9).

This adds up to about 700 links to Web pages, all of which have some relationship to Cyberculture. What's more, there are roughly 750,000 links collected within the entire hierarchy of the Cyberculture category. A reasonable guess is that one can reach 27 million links from the site.

What distinguishes Voice of the Shuttle is the quality and intellectual analysis that organizes this vast and complex tapestry of ideas. The first 700 links aren't just plain names and links. Each is accompanied by a description of what the linked page contains, what other sources or reference material might be found, who created the site and why.

How Much Is Enough?

From the Voice of the Shuttle's inception in 1994 through last year, Liu has been responsible for every word, every link, every judgment.

There were dollops of institutional or personal research funding, but it was his driving genius, his dedication, that kept the site alive. Last year, he found support from graduate students in the UCSB English department, but their work and Liu's meager funding are hardly enough to ensure that Voice of the Shuttle will grow - or even continue. If there's a Web site more deserving of funding, I've not seen it. Large-scale information gathering, editing and management require financial support. On the Internet - which some of us still hope will include a sphere outside e-commerce - lacking funds is like having your tongue cut out and your loom smashed by Tereus' lackeys.

Anyone who's spent time sifting through a digital haystack to get even a few relevant results from a standard search engine can recognize the value of a project like Voice of the Shuttle. All a person has to do is log on, scan the site and watch the hours slip away as he or she reads and surfs, surfs and reads. This is the future of self-directed education on the Internet.