THE DIGITAL EXPERIENCE

Imagine a document in which information flows transparently from one idea to the next; half-way down a passage which is explicating the conservation of momentum, suddenly the theme switches to a discussion of remote sensor imagery , complete with illustrations and diagrams. Each document contains the information available in the other; each subject is procurable in its entirety.

Any one manuscript leads both to more specific information as well as to contrary material, all in varying degrees of clarity and in any number of different languages; the information is at once brilliant and useless.

The work is public domain, its existence is made possible by the contribution of millions of individuals. Its topics are as vast as its growth rate is unpredictable; and yet it occupies no discernable physically occupiable space. Although limited in its tangibility by its media [the judgement of the merit of such a "limit" is of no concern here], it is understood through the incorporation of the same spatial nomenclature used in the material world, the world of the corporeal body and the human spirit:

It uses words like cyberspace, sites, browsing, surfing, navigating, chat; these mimetic constructions are both physical and quasi-architectural, their use in the pre-digital world pre-supposed the activity occurring in both a temporal and a spatial context, and yet this new media lauds the need to exist within a specific architectural locale.

In browsing this infinite volume of knowledge, the breadth of human understanding may be explored, and yet in all its description of life and living, it is unable to replace our human desire for collectivity.

Should it be enshrined or entombed? Will it define us, or we it?