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THE INTERNET MAPPING PROJECT Please draw a map of the internet, as you see it. Indicate your “home.” Your age __________ Your occupation __________________________________________________________________________ Average number of hours per day on the internet ___________ Return to Kevin Kelly ([email protected], or 149 Amapola Ave., Pacifica, CA 94004) For results see www.kk.org.

Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

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Non-professional cartographers map the Internet, based on what they do.

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Page 1: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

THE INTERNET MAPPING PROJECTPlease draw a map of the internet, as you see it. Indicate your “home.”

Your age __________ Your occupation __________________________________________________________________________ Average number of hours per day on the internet ___________

Return to Kevin Kelly ([email protected], or 149 Amapola Ave., Pacifica, CA 94004) For results see www.kk.org.

Page 2: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

Mental maps, however cognitively housed, are socially constructed. They are a particular

form of ‘imagined geography’ that illustrate the complex relationships between the social

and the spatial ... Mapping, then, in all of its overlapping forms, contributes to geographic

rhetorics by insisting upon the real and imagined production of space and more complex

ways of representing places and spaces.

Nedra Reynolds, Geographies of Writing

Map your use of the Internet

I asked friends and family to map their use of the Internet. Why would anyone want to

map the Internet? As Nedra Reynolds states, “mapping is an important spatial practice

that illustrates the link between geography and culture...” which implies that the maps

presented here have been influenced by the mapper’s culture.

We are going to analyze these images to see what Reynolds is talking about here.

Since the Internet doesn’t have a geological setting, what are these maps going to look

like? The form and shape they take will tell us a lot about the creator and how they see

the world.

There are no right and wrong answers here – everyone uses and sees the potential

uses of the Internet differently. And although I said ‘map,’ many of the participants

created charts that explained or displayed sites visited, how often, and in what order.

Looking between the evolutions of Google’s road map, we can see that nothing is fixed,

that everything is evolving and changing, even what claims to represent the world we

live in. But that, too, is changing, isn’t it?

Page 3: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

By looking at these Internet maps, we can see how Internet-savvy users browse the

web and how non-savvy people spend their time. I’ll let you guess who is who.

Map 1

This is how I reacted to my own prompt: Map your use of the Internet. I thought about all

the access points to the Internet. I have a browser open, with images of the pages I visit

most: Facebook, Gmail, YouTube, Projeqt, Netflix, Darlene Antonelli Is --, Rowan

University, and Twitter. I have the World of Warcraft launcher open because that’s

another way I delve into the Internet. And I have an image of an iPhone looking at The

New York Times since that is another way I access the Internet.

Looking at this semiotically, using Hall’s book, the browser is the first image we see,

which indicates it’s the oldest technique of accessing the internet, while World of

Warcraft and the iPhone are positioned on the left, indicating they are newer points-of-

access. While the largest image is the browser, the one with the most contrast and most

eye-drawing colors is the World of Warcraft launcher, which indicates that the game is

Page 4: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

the most important of the three (not even counting the fact that the Launcher is

overlaying the browser window). Turshi (2004) writes in his book, Maps of the

Imagination, “how we see depends, in part, on what we want to see,” which would imply

then, looking at my map, that only these three places exist. These are the only three

ways to access the Internet.

Map 2

This map is constructed like a flow chart; it doesn’t map the access points to the

Internet, but it displays where the user goes while on the Internet. First, we start at the

woman sitting at the computer desk, we follow the arrows and the steps: social

networking, entertainment, break for porn, the lolz, brain food, vlogs and blogs, email

break, and online shopping and merchandise browsing. This map shows us that the

user is very formulaic when browsing the Internet. Rather, she doesn’t browse, but

follows a particular path in the Internet’s World Wide Web. She lists (we can assume

this is a female creator because the icon in the beginning, which we can assume is a

beginning because it’s where the first arrow originates, is a female) the specific

Page 5: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

websites she visits regularly, in what order, and what she does on those sites: an

extremely organized approach to something as un-mapped and chaotic as the Internet.

Map 3

This user created something completely un-like the others, a map which lacks images

(and the Internet is known for its graphical environment). We see different color boxes,

but are left without a legend to tell us what the colors and shape boxes mean.

Considering modern times and how culture thinks, pink is the color for females, while

boys get blue. Thus, we can imagine that the pink boxes are a female activity while the

blue boxes are male activities. However, one person created this image, and that

Page 6: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

person could not have meant that interpretation of the colors (from personal

experience).

Ignoring the colors, we see that each box is separate, while we know that everything

existing on the Internet is connected. To have the boxes separate, does the user think

of her activities on the ‘net as disconnected activities? Is looking up the news and

weather different than researching? Thinking semiotically, we see that the Researching

box is much larger than any of the other boxes presented. We can infer that researching

is the most important time the user spends on the Internet. It’s also a slightly different

shade of blue than the other blues, as well as the only box in that color. I’m left

wondering, what do these colors mean?

However, I’m mostly interested in the overall design of the map, which lacks images, an

essential piece of the Internet. It’s a modest image, using simple font, colors, and

shapes, but the Internet is nothing like that. In fact, this map is reminiscent of the

Internet in the early 90s, when everything was made out of boxes and squares. Perhaps

this is an older user of the Internet who felt most comfortable in the old Internet (Web

1.0).

Comparing the two, map 2 and map 3, we can see how different the users approach the

Internet and what it means to them. Map 2 consists of specific sites and a specific path,

while Map 3 lacks specificity in both path and sites. Map 3 actually places themes in the

boxes. Turchi explains that “every map intends not to simply to serve us but to influence

us” (88), which points out to me the names of sites portrayed in Map 2, where none

exist on Map 3.

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Map 4

Map 5

Page 8: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

Map 6

Graphs 4-6 are all made in the same vein of flow charts, although Map 4 and Map 5 are

more similar together. Map 6 is unlike the two previous, as the user does not make a

decision based on environment. The central box, “Firefox” begins the Internet journey,

as it has more arrows leaving than incoming. From the starting point, we can figure that

Facebook, the largest box in the image, is the most-used site on the list.

The hectic lines and chaotic placement of the boxes hint at the chaotic nature and

boundary-less Internet. From this lack of structure and design, we can infer how the

user feels about the Internet: that it is an un-mappable space; that has no boundaries,

shape, or rules. Each box feeds into another, which feeds into another, which feeds into

another, for an indefinite pattern. She understands, however, that everything on the

Internet is connected, whether that connection starts at Firefox, her browser, or her

blog, which leads to her professional life as well as personal life.

Page 9: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

Map 7

This user took a direct approach to mapping, by imposing his web history onto a road

map. As with cultural rules, we know that the creator of this map started with the bottom

of the M and worked up to create the word “MY,” and so we have a place to start. Each

red dot is a location, an Internet location, and if we were able to click on them, we’d be

taken to the website that he visited first in the day. Although the image spells “My Web

:)” we can assume that this user did not drive in that shape, stop at every point and

browse a page on the Internet. However, why did the user decide to arbitrarily places

pins on a road map? Why not actually put them where they were looked at? Instead, he

created an image that spells, “My Web :)” Also, we can tell that he grew tired and

rushed after spelling “My” by acknowledging the decrease in readability after that word.

Were the websites in the “My” more important than the other sites?

There are many ways to analyze, create, and think of maps. These are just a few looks

Page 10: Ladies and Gents: We Have Mapped the Internet

into how people create maps from memory. They are each culturally defined, from the

map that took a specific path through a collection of available paths, to the map that was

created on a road map.

I challenge you, reader, to this “If you run maps in a sequence, people are bound to

make meaning of the order,” according to Denis Wood in Everything Sings – although

the maps are placed according to the flow of analysis, what meaning do you derive from

the order in which the maps appear?

According to Turchi (2004), “a ‘good’ map provides the information we need for a

particular purpose – or the information the mapmaker wants us to have,” which is to say

that these might not be good maps for people other than the creators. If a person had

no idea how to access the Internet or move around it, these maps would not provide any

help.