Mapping the Technological

On a NetZero commercial, the CEO, said something like, “we all know that all of the internet providers get you to same the internet, so why not pay less for the same product?”

Good point. As consumers that makes sense. A lot of sense. Same thing, less money, good bargain. The Internet for cheaper, not free. A space that is both real and not real. Exists and does not exist. Regulated and not regulated. Coded and visual. www dot the same thing dot com. We can all get to the same place by logging on, paying our monthly connection fee and hitting a few keystrokes. We can be in the same place at the same time, looking at the same thing. We can all be there and here at the same moment. The Internet is one place and yet, it feels like every place.

I tried to map the Internet.
I destroyed an Ethernet cable to look at what made my connectivity possible. I wrapped pieces of the empty cable shell around an orb that is both our planet and our hub. There are two ends to the cable, both still intact with their wiring. One hangs from the center, the culmination of coil similar to a stovetop burner. The other sits in a blanket of rare color, the possibility of anything keeping it glued to the canvas. The destroyed wiring swings from one end of the canvas to the next, at times remaining connected to the next wire and at other times cut from its connection. The canvas is both 3-dimensional and flat, with pieces of the wiring stuck to the paint and flowing from it. In Laurie Anderson’s Stories from the Nerve Bible she discusses the Internet and technology in terms of a series of numbers strung together to manifest something both physical and not. Hanging on the cords, in an attempt to follow this line of thought, are newspaper cutouts of numbers, arbitrarily placed. In the middle of the board, weaving in between the coil and the wires is a flimsy silhouette of a flower, both trapped in the technological cyberscape and blooming out of it.

I tried to map the Internet.

We all know, as the CEO says, that there is one Internet out there, I doubt however, it looks like this. Whatever it is, it is accessible in almost any part of the world and yet it still strikes me as existing somewhere outside of the world.

We certainly rely on the Internet and in a way now, we co-exist with it.