There were defined limits. Connections. Points of reference.
When going through some of his father’s papers, David Newbury, lead developer with Carnegie Museum of Art, found a map of the Internet from 1973. Back then, it wasn’t even called “the internet” (with or without a capital “I”).
Going through old papers my dad gave me, I found his map of the internet as of May 1973.
The entire internet. pic.twitter.com/0krvYoRGav
— David Newbury (@workergnome) December 10, 2016
Fast forward forty-odd years and the online landscape has changed dramatically.
In this more recent map, you can see that the connections, sites and locations are wildly different. Now powered by data from Alexa, this map of the internet shows the vast majority of websites from the no 1 ranked site, Google, through to sites that barely rank a mention. But even this massive map doesn’t include all sites. Just a selection.
And that’s the most amazing aspect of all.
There’s more to the web than we know or can see. It’s like the future. We only understand it moment by moment, experience by experience.