WHAT IS THIS?

the web as microbiome

Although it may seem counter-intuitive, digital information is not eternal. Have you ever hopped on the Wayback Machine only to find websites rotted by broken links and missing images? Digital space and information rot in a manner similar to that of physical, organic decay. All that is digital is physical; every webpage is hosted on a phycial computer that takes up space in reality.

I invite you here to think about the web as a living ecosystem, which is made operational by microorganisms that are not visible with the naked eye. These organisms build the web, but they also break it down. As in the physical world, decay is an important and positive part of a healthy ecosystem.

If we want to make sense of the small creatures that make up the microbiome of the digital world, first we need to build out the metaphor a little. Much like ecological systems, the web can be understood in terms of levels. At the highest level, an ecosystem, where many creatures operating individually can be seen as one cohesive unit1. That makes the creatures of this ecosystem the websites and web pages that populate it. Looking further down, we have the component elements of a web page (images, text, etc.) as organs and other body-components. Then moving to a microscopic level, the lines of code that build the web are the cells that build the organisms. Moving even further down, it follows that the binary ones and zeros of digital technology are the base chemical components that create all matter, organic and inorganic.

I’ve also broken down this extended metaphor into a chart, if you are the type of person who likes charts.

Ecosystem → The Web
Viewable Organisms → Web Pages
Organs → Web Content/Elements
Cells → Lines of Code
Chemical Compounds → 1s and 0s

This is the basis of my thinking that lead up to the creation of this project. Since then, it has manifested in the creation of model organisms that represent the cells and building blocks that shape the web, as well as the forces that can lead to its decay.

1 What is the difference between the web and the internet? If you’re just talking about everyday life and colloquial speech, these terms of often used interchangably. Technically however, the web is the content and information that is accessed via the internet. Web = content on a website; Internet = the series of tubes that let you access that content. So I suppose in this extended metaphor, if the web is the ecosystem, then the internet is perhaps the air that all the creatures move through.