The classical analogy for recreational use of the Internet is the surfer. In using the web, the surfer would be carried by the waves involuntarily, when he clicked his way through the branches of the web on impulse.
Today the surfer is washed ashore and the web is gone. No longer is there a huge structure of nodes connected through references. The links are there, but the new ontology of the contemporary world of information is one of streams, not of steady pages. The net now has the dimension of time, according to which individual items form a sequence.
Where our surfer previously moved about he now stands still and lets the text and images go before his eyes. He constantly refines his selection of streams, bringing in new interests and dropping out things not worth his time. Out of his activities flows yet another stream, in fact partly created by his choices of viewing alone.
What is the new metaphor of computerized procrastination to be? Flowing? Currenting?
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Climate politics revolves around questions of justice. Many lines of arguments refer to the fact that the first world is largely to blaim for putting all the stuff up there. Hence my surprise in seeing the above representation of per capita responsibility for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Factoring in deforestation puts Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea way past most of Europe.
But perhaps we are the bad guys anyway. Expect some interesting brawls next month.
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It happens that one walks out of the most beautiful of situations with only the most rudimentary and cursory memories and representations of that which has passed.
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