When we struggle to explain the inherent qualities of a medium, we tend to defer to analogies and metaphors. This is especially true of the internet. Clouds, highways, streams, and real estate are just a few examples of the concepts employed to represent this intangible invention. Staring into a screen, it’s easy to imagine an […]
Architecture and the Internet: Designing places in cyberspace
Cyberspace, as the information space is called, has become accessible in the past decade through the World Wide Web. And although it can only be experienced through the mediation of computers, it is quickly becoming an alternative stage for everyday economic, cultural, and other human activities. As such, there is a potential and a need to design it according to place–like principles. Making places for human inhabitation is, of course, what architects, landscape architects, and town planners have been doing in physical space for thousands of years. It is curious, therefore, that Cyberspace designers have not capitalized on the theories, experiences, and practices that have been guiding physical place–making. While most 3D environments closely mimic physical spaces, they are, by and large, devoid of the essential characteristics that differentiate a ‘place’ from mere ‘space.’ And only rarely are they sensitive to, and take advantage of, the peculiarities of Cyberspace. We believe that this state of affairs is temporary, characteristic of early adoption stages of new technologies. As the Web matures, and as it assumes more fully its role as a destination rather than as means of communication, there will be a growing need to design it according to place–making principles. By looking at physical architecture as a case study and metaphor for organizing space into meaningful places, this paper explores the possibility of organizing Cyberspace into spatial settings that not only afford social interaction, but, like physical places, also embody and express cultural values. At the same time, because Cyberspace lacks materiality, is free from physical constraints, and because it can only be ‘inhabited’ by proxy, these ‘places’ may not necessarily resemble their physical counterparts.
Toward Wayfinding Infrastructure for the Living Web · Atlas Research Group
Our world is getting crazier by the day. Our old maps and compasses weren’t made for this complexity. While new tools may open up amazing possibilities, they also make it easier to lose ourselves – especially when they don’t belong to us, and make us vulnerable to other people’s hidden choices and unsavory intentions about what is worth attending to.
Art or tool?
The Internet spaces I tend to inhabit have more polarisation than at many other recent times, and little explication of the worldviews that lead to different premises for discussion, that in turn...
Break up the Browsers. A Proposal to Save the Open Web. - Movement For An Open Web
The Open Web is one of the world’s modern wonders. Based on core, universally recognised technical standards and owned and controlled by no one body, it is a unique structureRead More
A space to converse and connect.
An X/Twitter Spaces alternative for Bluesky and the open web. Creating good vibes in the friendly skies.
The Case for Open Sovereignty in a Fragmenting Internet
Once, the Internet promised to dissolve borders. It was humanity’s great experiment in connection — a place where ideas, innovation, and communities could move freely, unburdened by geography or...
Making Space for a Handmade Web | Figma Blog
There’s a resurgence of small, handcrafted sites challenging the current trajectory of the internet. Joining the movement is as simple as making your own.
we were online
Turn the internet into a living, shared space with real-time traces of people browsing.
The Atmosphere . Building the open social web
Part II: USENET — Let's Return to Public Spaces
Usenet was what the Web is missing nowadays: a genuinely public space, with unclear ownership
Some Thoughts on the Open Web
The Open Web means several things to different people, depending on context, but recently discussions have focused on the Web's Openness in terms of access to information -- how easy it is to publish and obtain information without barriers there.
toward a new aesthetic
Lately I’ve been thinking about what being online looks like. The actual look of it. The aesthetic. As I continue to think and write and talk about escaping...
toward a new aesthetic
Lately I’ve been thinking about what being online looks like. The actual look of it. The aesthetic. As I continue to think and write and talk about escaping...
Federating friendly spaces - Roomy
hearkening back to the cozy vibes of old-web neighborhoods
I've been thinking about the beauty of open data and how the AT Protocol and wider Atmosphere ecosystem has been recapturing that open data environment that once defined the web. It really does feel special. vale.rocks/posts/atproto-ethos #atproto #ATProtocol
The AT Protocol Harkens An Old Web Ethos
vale.rocks
