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Non-professional cartographers map the Internet, based on what they do.
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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.
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?
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
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
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
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.
Map 4
Map 5
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.
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
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.