Sunday, August 15, 2004

Too much is never enough?

After a little online footwork I now have over 4 GB of storage space between my four -- no, wait, five -- email accounts. Isn't that unfathomably more web space than any one person should have? I can store my entire mp3 collection in my email accounts. I can receive small countries one email at a time. I'm an electronic landfill, and I am merely one of thousands.

Apropos, the concept of web space simply flabbergasts me. I can't make heads or tails of it. For example, *where* is the Internet? A strange question, isn't it? The terms seem altogether incongruous, like they come from a drug-induced mythic poem (I aim to please). The instinctive oddness of the question should signal to us that we're already in very strange waters.

Why, as a second example of my flabbergastation, could I not start my own web? Is there some literal, semi-tangible medium called the Internet, like an electromagnetic haze, on which only the 'real' World Wide Web fits? Why couldn't I just program -- presto -- my own electronic domain ('eee.hotmail.vom'?)? Such mysteries keep me up at nights.

I make no secret of my ignorance in these matters, but I do think we deal with the Internet, and technology generally, all too unassumingly, all too casually. Every day we are in the face of the deep metaphysical conundra, but all we usually do about is "click here".

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