Look it up in the directory
Traffic on the internet is concentrated. I needn’t tediously spell out where. You’ve probably been to all of these places, maybe in the last 24 hours. Here the idea of the the internet as a directory is fading fast in memory, and faster in practice. The “web” structure of the internet, the internet that is an open-ended set of servers and landing spots that are conceptually and physically distinct from one another, and which are only linked through the deliberate efforts of individual people to make a connection between Point A and Point B–this notion of the web is endangered.
Let me explain by example. The directory aspiration is still alive on the more artisanal parts of the internet. A few that are not too hard to find:
When you enter these open-ended labyrinths, it becomes more obvious why they are out of sync with the internet’s modern cadence. These are unabashedly textual and qualitative documents; their lists are usually anti-hierarchical, making no attempt to describe which site is the best among all the others, or to put them in any kind of ranking. The directory is an aggressive reflection of one person’s opinion and efforts. What is conspicuous in its absence are metrics that shape or reorder these lists on the fly: no upvotes or feeds with hidden logic.
The directory also ignores the most mundane organizing principle of the modern web (this blog included): chronological ordering. The cruel reality of pushing “the new” into the default is that almost everything seem old (It’s been a month since you’ve posted something to Twitter? What’s wrong? A Wordpress blog without any activity for three months? Must have been abandoned!) Only the most labor-intensive, exhaustingly rational, grim commercial ventures have a real chance of meeting the daily demand for something new.
Sometimes I wonder if the directory will ever have its renaissance on the mainstream internet, and in what form, but then I think of a site like Wikipedia, and I think there’s hope. There the view is not “everything that’s new” but “everything that’s real,” a maze where you never have to reach the last door. Maybe it is only because Wikipedia claims to be so factual that it is allowed to bask in such generative disorganization.