The Wild Surmise

Request for nature metaphors in cyberspace

I'm collecting examples of nature metaphors used to describe cyberspace and the internet and it's turning out to be a giant task so I would really appreciate some help.

Where Lawns End

Where Lawns End: The Rumpus Interview with Amy Stein isn't about cyberspace but it resonates with my research because it focuses on 'our conflicting impulses to both hang back from and bridle the wild' - very relevant to the way human beings behave when they encounter an unfamiliar space. In cyberspace, very often, fear of wild animals is often replaced with of fear of the 'wild' humans who may be lurking with intent to harm. Even more reason, therefore, to be sure of one's boundaries. (With thanks to Tawny Grammar)

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The Twitter Tree

 

MG Siegler of Techcrunch provides not just a useful if short commentary:

Sure, you could read about the history of Twitter in long-form blog posts, but that seems to go against the spirit of the micro-messaging service. So instead, here’s a picture created by InfoShotsManolith that puts some key moments of the service’s history in visual form. This spans from the advent of UNIX “Talk” in the 1980s (an early real-time text update system), all the way to the Twipocalypse. for the blog

But also an earlier draft of the image concept:

'Nature and Cyberspace: The Wild Surmise' to be published by Bloomsbury Academic

Today I signed a contract with Bloomsbury's new scholarly imprint Bloomsbury Academic. Delivery date is September 2012 so i need to get my skates on - lots to do. I'm very excited to be working with Bloomsbury, since they seem to have the right idea about publishing in a new media world - they understand how open source works and they're prepared to experiment at the more risky end of publishing. I gather their new website will be launching soon, and there we will see the full glory of their intentions :)

As for The Wild Surmise - they want to switch the title around to 'Nature and Cyberspace: The Wild Surmise', and I can see how that makes sense because it's more explicit but retains the poetry of the original phrase. I'm keen to reach beyond academia with this book.

So now the idea becomes a firm reality. I'm really looking forward to it!

Tim O'Reilly: "If the internet were a landscape, it would be an ocean."

When I recently interviewed Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media, I asked him the same question I've been asking all my interviewees - "If the internet were a landscape, what kind of landscape would it be?" His first impulse, he said, was to think of it as an ocean:

"The sea is a sustaining medium, most of which is invisible to us and which, like our atmosphere, we largely take for granted. But elements of it occasionally swim within our range of vision. I think the internet is a lot like that - we see very little of it at any one time."

I was reminded of his comment yesterday when I marked my last week in California with a whale-watching trip in the Santa Barbara Channel. We saw several humpbacks but the really exciting moment was when we were surrounded by dozens of leaping dolphins racing alongside and even under the boat, speeding just below the water, right beside us, and flying into the air in groups of three or four. The water was boiling with them all around! This crummy phone picture doesn't begin to do justice to their joyful grace. Of course, we have no idea whether they are joyful in any sense at all, but being out there with them reminded me of how joyful they make me feel, and of how little I know about the mysteries of the ocean. I stared into the water and tried to imagine how deep it was and what was down there. It will be a while yet before the internet is equally deep and complex but I do agree with Tim O'Reilly that we see very little of it at any one time and indeed when I think about the deep web I often get that same sense of unplumbed depths. And I wonder what kinds of strange creatures are evolving down there in the internet dark?

The drive to Esalen

I haven't visited Esalen on this trip, although I've been there a couple of times in previous years. This picture dates from the bronze-casting workshop I attended in 2004. But for this research I've been reading Jeffrey J Kripal's book 'Esalen', and I came across this great description of the simple act of getting there, which reminds me of the travails of the journey to Big Sur:

"The forty-mile drive down from Monterey and Carmel, past Pebble Beach on a famous road whose twists and turns along an ocean mountainside could easily end your life at any moment has already slightly altered your state of consciousness and made you a bit nauseous. You feel funny, a bit disorientated. You are grateful to step out of the car and stand on land that is not moving or, worse yet, falling." (p4)

"Many people mistakenly think of the internet as a destination but, like zen, it is merely a pathway" Philip Toshio Sudo

I was recently reminded of this quote, which I love. It's from Zen Computer, by the late Philip Toshio Sudo. I highly recommend this thoughtful and delightful read.