The Virtual Reality of the Web Landscape

“The spatiality of the Internet [World Wide Web] is an abstraction and therefore not tied to the physical world.” Upon some reflection, Akin Akinly, one of my students, added that the Web is “holographic, a spatial representation of the human neural network, replicated in the topography of cyberspace.” For most of us, the Net is a virtual [artificial or simulated, performing the function of something that really isn’t there] space, a web or universe, even a womb, that contains millions of addresses and links, and has the possibility of expanding into every conceivable direction. These few descriptors already indicate that we use the language of our human past to describe this unique

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spatiality. Thus we “get on” (the train of) the Web and we “surf” (its ocean of sites). However real the Web may be in its virtuality, we can barely begin to imagine this unusual new world and so we assign it characteristics that brings it closer to our understanding. This being/entity, too, will never be more to us than our limited mental scope permits.

The World Wide Web is virtual in that one cannot see it in the traditional sense; it is real in that it opens to our linking devices, like the end of a womb, and that we can access it, communicate through it, and buy on it everything from apples to xylophones. It is virtual in that we cannot actually touch products on it; it is real in that they may be seen, say as a photo of a book cover, and that they can be shipped from a warehouse somewhere around the globe. It is virtual in that we cannot ordinarily see the electric impulses and languages that make text and image transmissions possible. But it is real in that the messages we send through it emerge in the form of letters and pictures on our screens. While we cannot see actual addresses in the form of buildings, we can see them in the form of Web pages.

Web spatiality is so real that its pages, or sites, can be bought and sold. The word site itself goes back to the Latin situs, place and location, as in to locate a town, house, or oneself. The Web address <Loans.com> was called a “prime piece of Internet real estate” when Bank of America recently bought it. (Quotations throughout are from recent issues of the Charlotte, North Carolina, newspapers, the Observer and the Herald, and are available from the author.)

Bruce Sterling, a science fiction writer, asks astutely, “What makes the invisible visible? New metaphors, sometimes, but I’d be betting on better instrumentation. A picture of the Earth from space did more for environmental awareness than any number of ecological urban legends.” Such “instrumentation” may include the available equipment; the number of individuals who can interact on the Web; the number of trained persons who can create software and hardware to exploit its new areas; and the funding available to explore options and products. Thus, for example, if equipment and software for the Web increases in sophistication, or venture funding rises, then in turn the Web can expand much as a womb expands to meet the needs of the growing child.

Once one has created addresses, or points of reference, it is useful to create a map to reach them. (By now the Web has so many addresses that a team of six Money magazine reporters had to labor for two months to sort out the best sites of every major personal-finance category.) Maps imply a finite universe; a space that can be followed to its borders. But because the Web is virtual, its borders should not be visualized as the ones we traditionally imagine; they may be no more than a limit of potentialities. The image of the Web being a womb fits well with an expanding universe of potentialities onto which one writes addresses.

Several people have begun to “map” the Web (see, for example, <www.cybergeography.com>). Sometimes this sort of map-making is called “common mental geography” because it is difficult to visualize the Web in terms of traditional maps even though it has spread all across the globe. As the Web is mapped, average users of it can visualize it in new ways and thus behave differently when they think about it and access it. According to one researcher, Martin Dodge from the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis at the University College London, “Simply having a map allows a new perspective, a new way to orient yourself. Relationships otherwise obscure may be revealed.”

Dodge further thinks that maps may assist not only to navigate the Web, but also “to define and control new territory.” The idea that one can control new territory on the Web allows for visualizing it as an expanding universe. Controlling new territory also implies conquering new territory and thus introduces the concept of traditional conquerors, be they suited up in political or business attire. That stream of thinking matches the idea of the Web as a landscape, as David Ranii visualized it in a recent article. One can carry the symbolism even further; as Charles Ferguson indicated with the subtitle of his book, High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars (1999). Wars have traditionally been associated with territory.

According to Pamela Li Calzi O’Connell, the maps of cyberspace may be arranged in two categories: “those depicting the physical structure and information traffic and patterns of global networks, and those addressing the content and social spaces of the electronic world.” While the two categories may overlap occasionally, several structural approaches stand out. One good example is Lucent Technologies’ Stephen Eick’s “Network Visualization Gallery” of Web traffic flowing around the world (see <www.bell-labs.com/user/

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eick/NetworkVis.html>). The images beautifully resemble geography and borders. In the most connected industrialized areas of the world individuals and institutions open sites and communicate with each other at a frantic pace. We gain an image similar to the route patterns of an airline that highlight certain cities around the world; one also notices the areas that are not linked at all and resemble the white spaces on pre-colonial maps. Only the participating areas are the safe havens.

Another example of map-making is Lucent Technologies’ William Cheswick’s non-geo-graphical conception of cyberspace (see <www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/ches/map/gallery>). He wants “to take the Net in its own terms—in its own space. Geographical maps I’ve seen have not worked very well.” Instead he has created what he calls “promiscuously propagating sea ferns, with countless feathery vines.”

According to Gregory C. Staple, so-called content maps are “the equivalent of land-use maps in the traditional cartographic world.” An interesting site in this area is <www.newsmaps.com> which has grid-based topographical maps. In this approach, map peaks reflect intense message and document activity and map lows reflect lesser levels of activity; distances between the peaks indicate relationships of topics. Other content map sites have recorded entertainment Web sites and teenagers’ happiness (<www.bcpl.net/~lboot/webmap2>). Julian Lombardi and Bob Pickens have launched one of the latest practical attempts in content mapping through their company, ViOS. According to Ranii, “ViOS intends to create a three-dimensional, virtual environment that resembles the animated landscapes of computer games.” The idea is that certain industries, say, computer manufacturers, can be accessed through one viewpoint icon. Thus, all computer manufacturers can be housed in one “neighborhood.” Meaningfully here, because most people recall icons more readily than words, they determined that Web “users would be able to use landmarks to locate a site.”

Many individual users of the Web do not reflect about the border or limits of it or create new Web businesses, and are only peripherally interested in a map or design of the Web. They want to be able “to get on it” and use it. “Getting on it” describes another dilemma for persons thinking about the spatiality of the Web. What do we “get on”? Usually we get on a horse, a bus, a train, or a plane—“real” means of transportation. The Web transports us very differently. Yet, to write in the language of some of my students, “It is a cool ride.”

Individuals associated with corporations tend to be interested in different perspectives of the Web than private individuals. Some business people are simply interested in designing an approachable site so that it can attract and retain customers. Because of their design skill, “amazon.com” became a household word as much as “eBay”. Some would argue that because of the creation of these addresses virtuality approaches reality. Not only that, amazon.com is backed by a huge distribution center in Reno, Nevada, that truly defies the term virtual.

This approach to creating addresses shows us that the Web fashioned another approach to doing business and thus adds a whole new dimension to business activity, with some individuals saying that it is a virtual way to doing business. To paraphrase Thomas Friedman, on one level the Web has added a whole new service industry to traditional industries, on another level the Web has underpinned globalization. In other words, we have ceased to operate exclusively on the ground [earth] level of steel plants and cars; we are now operating as if above and beyond these industries. We operate in a linked environment that enhances these industries while creating a different approach to interacting and interdepending in everything from refining ideas to transacting business.

Another perspective to this landscape is the service that people like Robert Lee provide as they connect businesses with other businesses. For example, he “buys and sells wholesale electricity, gas, and coal, and financial securities designed around those commodities.” Other organizations that work with the Web in similar fashion are e-Steel, Chemdex, SciQuest, ChemConnect, VerticalNet, and BizBuyer. All of these organizations link certain business activities with one another and thus are said to operate within a certain “neighborhood.” In this case “the neighborhood” reflects the human need to speak of certain activities as if they were located in a certain part of the Web. They are not; they are linked through no more than the similarity of their business.

One of the remarkable realizations emerging from Cheswick’s fernlike Web map is that the Web not only links people and institutions beyond their respective external boundaries, it also links people and divisions within organizations. Thus employees can “talk” to each other without leaving their offices and create a virtual environment en-

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veloping their offices. As a matter of fact, my daughter Melanie tells me that the hospital where she works in Stuttgart, Germany, does not allow e-mail to leave the confines of the institution; thus it functions only “intern(ally).”

For individuals, the Web offers another virtual dimension. It is the sheer convenience of corresponding with relatives, friends, and colleagues around the corner and around the globe, and we thus participate not only in the spidery web that some speak of, but we also participate in a new way of perceiving space and distances. Distances that once seemed only surmountable with time and expense by mail, boat, plane, phone, and fax now are scaled with practically instantaneous messages and attachments that may delight the mind and the eye.

For some time, the very newness and approachability and openness of the Web evoked positive visions of it, like the image of a womb. More recently, the less positive images of the spider web and labyrinth have emerged. While one may stick addresses on the spider web which are visible to those who have access to it, one may also get stuck on it. While one may enter the labyrinth of the Web, one can get lost in it and emerge scarred, perhaps never to re-enter.

The openness of the Web adds a final revealing dimension to its virtual reality. In many of its uses and applications, the Web continues to reflect the perceptions and needs of the members of the middle and upper classes that created it. One is supposed to be able to ride on the Web, like along a “real” highway, safely and freely. It is supposed to be as safe as a womb. Our credit cards, our Social Security numbers, are all protected and secure. Although this perception of a harmless labyrinth has been questioned before, with the new cyber terrorist who can attack sites and institutions, we have added fear. As Nadja Schoelzhorn, a family friend, sees it, the secret spaces of the labyrinth have now turned from terra incognita to dark corners. They are both virtual and real dark places. The terrorist is now terrorizing virtually and the Web has succumbed to the same angst that we feel when we go to the subway or to the library. The terrorist, someone who causes havoc on land (terra) is now causing it virtually (supra terra). It is not too farfetched to say that the middle and upper classes have lost one more safe haven.

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