Saved by the search.
People often seek advice via the internet, and of course for years people have turned to newsgroups in order to find lay advice that is often very useful. Actually being saved, however, seems to be rather extreme, but apparently it happens:
Terri Hinson, a criminal law student living in North Carolina. In November 1996, a fire burned down her house, killing her 1-year-old son Joshua. Police accused Terri of setting the fire herself. Authorities took away her daughter and put her in a foster home, and Terri was charged with first-degree murder. Put under house arrest, she bought a computer and logged onto the Internet. By searching on the Web, she came across Texas fire expert Jerry Hurst, who is critical of the way many fires are investigated.
Hurst offered to work for free and, via email, looked into the case. He noticed that the fire appeared to have started with a faulty wire connected to a heater. The heater had been plugged in for the first time the night of the fire. After Hurst showed his evidence to the prosecutor and his expert, all charges were dropped. She got her daughter back, and is now training to be an expert in arson investigations. "The bottom line is," Terri says, "the Internet saved my life."
Logging on to the internet isn't absolutely necessary in order to find a fire investigation expert, but the chances of finding someone in a local phone book, or via a magazine article, or a television show, are considerably smaller than via a web search. Which is precisely why we've learned to turn to the web and to search engines.
Go to: The internet saved my life, or
Go to: I search, therefore I am?