Down

I think yesterday's conversation went really well, and I would like to extend it here, if I may. (Because I haven't been repeatedly encouraged to post here, or anything.)

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between the internet and physical places. One of the themes which has arisen frequently in class lately is the very basic idea that physical places have maps. This is interesting, I think, when applied to the internet, because, while the internet is a series of pages, or rooms-- while the locations are divided into (usually) reasonable portions, as in Borges' library-- it is impossible to map a two-dimensional representation of those rooms-- at least, not without some spectacular innovation. And this is because there is no down. There is absolutely no orientation. Actually, I'm about to contradict myself. There is orientation. It just isn't up or down. Maybe I should think larger. Maybe the internet is less like the surface of the earth, something that can be mapped two-dimensionally, and more like outer space.

Because the closest things we have to orientation on the internet are these, what shall we call them, these points of convergence-- there is a better word for this, I know it-- where a lot of trails on the internet will lead. Wikipedia, for instance, is a cluster of articles, all of which are closely interlinked, and if you Google search any given term the Wikipedia article for said term will be sure to top the list because so many people link to Wikipedia every day. It's common practice in the blogosphere, when referring to something of which people may or may not be aware, to link to the Wikipedia article, so they can explore the topic at their leisure along with any adjacent and relevant topics which they made find interesting. So Wikipedia is an enormous-- I want to use the word fulcrum, but that isn't it-- point of convergence, as is Facebook. Most major sites would act as points of convergence, and this is the closest thing we have to orientation, because these points of convergence exert a sort of gravitational pull-- the larger a site is the more likely one is to link to it or to utilize it as a reference. So the closest thing I have to a map of the internet in my head is this enormous sphere, because I have to make it some sort of limited shape and I like spheres, with thousands of different, hair-thin, almost imperceptible links stretching from one place to another and converging in densely-packed planetlike structures. What I'm doing with this in my head, and this is entirely arbitrary-- I'm making the links silver on a black background, and as I've said they're hair thin, so you can't see them unless they intersect rather a lot. And because a point of intersection has to be fairly densely packed to be seen, the information-masses are scattered across the blackness, like stars. And as links are constantly made, shifted, and broken, the map changes and grows.

This is fanciful on my part, but probably the most realistic thing one could devise which would act as a map to the internet would be something like Google or Bing-- sites which orient you by helping you find areas with the greatest gravitational pull. I am trying desperately not to compare Google to the North Star because at some point this will just become ridiculous. I'm going to end this here.