Re: cyberespace mirror-city

Brandon Van every (vanevery@rbdc.rbdc.com)
Sat, 1 Jul 95 12:48 EDT

while we are conceptualizing improbable/impossible architectures, i
think that a more organic approach would be more interesting. why
encapsulate dead data in dead structures (buildings)? i propose that
the cyberspace mirror city not be a city at all, but it become a
cyber-organism. wouldn't it be more interesting to visualize a
"cyberspace" where data pulsed thru veins of electronic
transactions/transgressions? maybe nodes on the net could be
represented as organs and their connections as veins. the flow of
information as blood etc.. (i could easily nominate certain
organ(izations) their respective body parts, but that would be
childish)....
no seriously, the more interesting visualization of the web is the
flow of information and not the places that store dead cells... why
create a map of something that is inherently a map already. its like
creating a map of the world where one foot equals one foot.. what's
the point. but, if this map would serve to reconceptualize data in a
new way, i'm all for it.....

Aesthetically and artistically, this conjures up a lot of interesting
images. You might even say that looking at "The Stomach of the Web"
would be _engrossing_! :-0

But from an info visualization standpoint:

1) Why visualize the flow of info on the web? i.e. why bother?
2) Why use 3d? The flow sure as hell isn't in 3d.

IMHO, it seems like (1) matters only if you're an Internet Marketer,
or a techie trying to optimize the efficiency of Web protocols. It's
totally irrelevant to the end user, since informational flow says
nothing about informational content.

(2) might be helpful if you're interested in the data flow of some
very limited subjects.

Cheers,
Brandon J. Van Every | Computer Graphics | The sun attempts
| | to be white,
vanevery@rbdc.rbdc.com | C++ UNIX X11 Motif | as white as
http://rbdc.rbdc.com/~vanevery | HTML CGI Perl TCL/Tk | daytime.