Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The Globalized Network After Next

Kleinberg's work is some pretty hard reading - dense, complex, and, *shudder*, science-y. It made my brain itch with ignorance at the diagrams. But it got me thinking about the structure of the internet - possibly the greatest of the Deleuze/Guattari rhizomes. (themselves the equally complex progenitors of a theory difficult to wrap one's head around)

How we experience the internet (and the networked world in general) depends on how we make connections. For many, it depends on their first portal - if nursed as a child, more likely than not, one's parents would introduce the blank slate to a Disney-fied children's world; the teen might find the internet to be the nirvana for sports and games; the clueless recently en-netted might find the ISP homepage appropriate; the academic would swear Google Books is the beating heart of information. From such beginnings flows the endless means of information procurement. And from there, the probability that one would flow from there to similarly themed sites might only increase; the endlessness quickly becomes a definite bubble - the rest of eternity blurring into an indecipherable mess of the Other.

For all the accessibility  the internet presents itself as, one rarely ventures out of one's common space. Examine your own internet habits. It might start with a quick scan of Google Mail, the news site of choice and perhaps a pick from xkcd, Soccernet, Pitchfork or your own personal analogue. The chances of one suddenly veering into another routine is rare; one might decide to visit a forwarded link but only if one's interests immediately sway that direction, one is unlikely to alter one's internet habits. I've recently added RockPaperShotgun and New Wars to my routine because I've always been interested in multimedia and defense studies. (This of course discounts the periphery of my routine - SurftheChannel occurs when I miss an episode of House; Google Books means that research was required; Rasa Indonesia is perused only when I forget my beef rendang recipe.)

While the Internet may or may not be infinite (or close enough as makes no difference), a good deal of it is absolutely, positively, subjectively (perhaps objectively) useless. There is no index to categorize all the information based on individual subjectivity of utility. The Internet, in effect, is like Borges' Library of Babel - tons of potentially useful information but wherein is impossible to find anything of value without an indexical reference. Simultaneously, following the Borgesian metaphor, there is an equally vast amount of information that may fit with our objectives but next to nothing that actually completely suit our requirements. Hence, while infinite in scope, the Internet is bounded by the very real constraints of what the brain can handle.

The reason why this is so is also how the internet's information is fabricated - by individuals themselves who share the same passions and interests of incredibly limited scope that you may have. It just so happens that, given the incredibly predictable nature (after a fashion) of human behavior, certain trends of interests tend to follow with similar interests. The individual who dedicates a website to the tracking of geological science will include, naturally, information on rock formations and link to many others who have geophilia. It takes a rare crossover to share a link with paleontology but from there, a connection. Hence, the rhizome spreads. Each nodule is, for all intents and purposes, self-contained but each shares a link to another. And then another. And then another. But for one to go from Point A to Point E requires a series of remarkable coincidences and connections. The rhizome, while seemingly infinite, still might always mean that to the limited imagination of the individual, because of the comfort shared in familiarity, because of the rarity of cross-pollination, and because of the way we enter the Internet and the interests we carry, the rhizome is... empty. It's only as full as we make it.

Aaron Wee

No comments: