Mapping digital worlds

As the realm of virtual information complexifies, it is increasingly difficult to collectively experience, let alone agree on concrete descriptions of events. The platforms we use to communicate often lack archival affordances, optimizing instead for the nonstop production of new content. So context collapses and signifiers empty their meaning. Whe... See more

“The internet of today is a battleground. The idealism of the ‘90s web is gone... The public and semi-public spaces we created to develop our identities, cultivate communities, and gain in knowledge were overtaken by forces using them to gain power of various kinds (market, political, social, and so on). This is the atmosphere of the mainstream web... See more

Digital spaces are an urban geography in their own right. The trouble is, most of our online spaces are monopolized by entities ultimately trying to sell us a product. As a result, those spaces similarly embody the same Orwellian doublespeak that characterized the Soviet era. We are told we can use them for building connection and community, but we... See more

Everyday, we land on the internet without a map. Instead, search is the dominant wayfinding paradigm. It is the information equivalent of exploring the local area at ground level. A search is a hypothesis, an instance of trial and error. With enough searches, we can usually get where we're going. However, we lack the overall context of how everythi... See more

The web in its current state is like a city without public spaces. People can only interact in places owned by someone else, and a small group of landlords captures an oversized share of all economic activity.

That's the thing with the internet. It is not a singular place: the internet is made up by many internets. Some are connected, and some are not. This makes it hard to talk about the internet because your internet is unlikely to be similar to mine. Even when we visit the same social site, we experience different worlds. Where D sees a subcategory of... See more

Digital maps can behave in a dynamic fashion because they are powered by data. When we use a map, data is both informing and responding to our actions to help us contextualize digital space.