Web Space, Web Place

AMKA responds to my meanderings about Web as utopia by wondering whether the Web is spatial at all. And well might he wonder since if the Web is spatial, it is definitely a weird type of space. Indeed, as AKMA says, “…space has dimensions of height, breadth, depth, all of which are absent (or extremely different) with relation to the Web.”

There was a really interesting discussion of the spatial nature of the Web over at Peterme‘s site that something I’d written spurred Peter to surface again. The point I was making (and make in my upcoming book) seems weaker than the rest of the discussion, but, fwiw, I argue that the Web is “place-ial,” not spatial for it has no dimensions. Rather, it consists of places, each of which has its own character and meaning.

But the main point of difference between me and AKMA on the spatiality of the Web seems to be that I’m trying to be a dutiful phenomenologist, pointing out that a weird spatiality deeply informs our Web experience, while AKMA seems in this instance to believe that we can change metaphors if the current ones are so based in real-world habits of thought that they “constrain our behavior.” AKMA writes:

How might we imagine the Web if we tried to conceive it nonspatially?

I am totally down with this project so long as we agree that what AKMA’s asking for isn’t a more accurate description of the Web because the current one isn’t effective. Instead, he’s asking for new poetry. And that’s much harder to do.

Categories: Uncategorized dw