On The Geography of the Internet
A nerdy piece thinking about the landscape of our digital world.
If I were to put everything on the internet onto some sort of digital map, the landscape would be pretty monotonous. Lots of designs look the same, templates are increasingly popular, and web designers have similar playbooks. But some parts would be very exciting, unfamiliar, and unique.
Websites are often shaped by their information architecture, and web design takes inspiration from the field of architecture. How can physical geography inspire how we think about the geography of the internet?
This newsletter is my attempt to explore the idea of virtual geography. And when I say virtual geography, I mean the landscape of the virtual world we are creating.
The world is not a completely random place.
Waldo Tobler is one of the most influential thinkers in the field of geography. He coined what is called “the first law of geography”.
“Everything is related to everything else. But near things are more related than distant things.” - Waldo Tobler, 1970 (source)
This was a simple yet profound statement. The people, ecology, and features of one place will have more similarities locally than the people, ecology, and features of faraway lands. Geographers call this spatial autocorrelation and it has been proven time and again.
How can we think about the geography of the virtual world?
To think about the geography of the new virtual world, I will be referring to David Hume, a man who lived in the 1700’s but thought about the relationship between ideas at length. The internet is made up of a lot of things, and those things are the product of people’s ingenuity, invention, and creativity… or ideas.
“There is a secret tie or union among particular ideas, which causes the mind to conjoin them more frequently, and makes the one, upon its appearance, introduce the other.” - David Hume, 1739 (source)
This idea is part of Hume’s Principles of Association. Hume identified three principles of association: resemblance, contiguity in time and space, and causation.
To Hume, the distance between two ideas is:
How much or how little they resemble each other.
The amount two ideas have in common.
How similar our expectations of the future are for the two ideas.
I think Hume offers a good framework for thinking about how websites, apps, and virtual environments relate to one another on the internet. I will be discussing familiar and unfamiliar digital spaces as well as orienting and disorienting design. All with the purpose of better understanding the geography of the internet.
Facebook feels like my hometown.
The year is 2008. I remember being in middle school finally get a Facebook account when it became available to people without college emails. I grew up with Facebook as one of the main social media platforms in my life (very sad thought, lol).
Facebook feels like my hometown for two reasons. Literally, all I see on Facebook is my hometown of Dobbs Ferry, New York. But also Facebook, itself, is my digital hometown in that it is the most typical, expected digital experience on the internet for me. I grew up with it. In the same way that the new Walgreens in Dobbs Ferry disorients me, Facebook adding new features disorients me. But generally, I have a deep familiarity with the layout and functionality of Facebook. To make a website deeply familiar for me personally, someone could pull influence from the 2009-2015 Facebook UI and interactions.
Discord felt like an alien planet.
In many ways, Discord is so exciting and very much feels like the future.
I think it took me a month to understand what the heck I was witnessing when I joined Discord. People said it was like Slack, but really it is a totally different layout and functionality. I unintentionally streamed my audio to some random people. I got reprimanded by a mod for making a joke about beets (they only wanted me to talk about beats). But I eventually understood how to engage. Discord originated from gamer friends wanting to talk to each other. Real friends. And so it is more communal and authentic than other social platforms.
Now I *get* Discord, but it is very different from something like Facebook that I grew up on.
Facebook is a social platform with pokes, private messages, group messages, making a profile, and wall posting. Discord is a social platform that has different servers you can hang out in, ways to private message, ways to have audio chats in groups, and mods. Facebook profiles were important, Discord profiles are totally basic. Identity on Facebook is more about how you present yourself whereas, identity on Discord is more about what you say and which servers you are in.
Not only do Facebook and Discord look completely different from one another, but they have completely different functions. In due time, I learned the Discord landscape, but not without a short period of confusion. To do something new and awesome, you can make the design as intuitive as possible but it will have the potential to disorient. And learning curves are not bad, if anything they are exciting. While Facebook is an example of a familiar digital environment, Discord is an example of an unfamiliar digital environment.
Now, I will look to Age of Empires 1 to think about orientation in virtual spaces.
Age of Empires 1, the best UI ever designed.
Not only is Age of Empires 1 beautiful, but it is also brilliant. I learned a lot about virtual geography from Age of Empires. AoE1 is a great example of a digital environment where the user feels very oriented. For those not familiar with the game, it is set in ancient Mesopotamia and is a real-time civilization building game where you create a society as a culture like the Hittites and battle to conquer the board in real-time. And throughout the journey, lots of things keep the player oriented.
When you begin Age of Empires, there is not that much you need to understand. You have a few people. You can take a few actions like create a town square. And most of the map you are on is black because you have not explored it. But as you continue to play:
The digital space expands slowly.
The actions you can take expand slowly.
The fixed bottom and top nav stay pretty much the same.
I would argue these are great, orienting principles to follow. Age of Empires is a seamless onboarding experience. The fixed nav at the top and bottom of the page keeps you grounded and oriented at all times. You are always in control of those fixed blocks. But the map is home to exciting exploration and developments. You go through the experience of exploring the world and building a society that is your own.
Released in 1997, its audience was new to most digital experiences and also new to the internet. For this reason, Age of Empires created a very clear and orienting experience.
The game experience builds so naturally that you are both oriented and discovering new geography and novel interactions from start to finish.
Games have gotten more involved as the gaming audience has gained more familiarity with video game experiences, but Age of Empires holds up. Microsoft rebooted Age of Empires 2 (originally launched in 1999) in 2019. Because it is amazing.
We can now explore vast, virtual open worlds like San Andreas.
When I first played Grand Theft Auto 5, I was floored by how real the world of San Andreas felt. The main player is thrown into a virtual open world that can take between 15 to 30 minutes to go from side to side. It can take weeks to go everywhere in San Andreas. Whereas Age of Empires slowly introduces new spaces and interactions to the user, the user slowly discovers new spaces and interactions in Grand Theft Auto. You can go through the missions and onboarding, but GTA 5 is very much about roaming and discovering parts of the map. Like Age of Empires, the fixed GTA map on the bottom left of the screen can always reorient the user.
Imagine putting GTA 5 in front of someone in 1997. They would also probably face more confusion than users today because we have become more familiar with game experiences. Confusion is not a bad thing, GTA 5 is what gamers want today. As user have more digital experiences, they get less confused and disoriented in new digital experiences. Gamers can be thrown into open maps and know to begin to explore. GTA 5 is an example of how we need less to be oriented today, but how fixed blocks on a screen like an open world map continue to persist to help with orientation.
The Grand Theft Auto 5 map is full of exciting and interesting experiences that were not possible in 1997.
Questions about digital spaces
Our virtual geography is ever-changing. It is being drawn and redrawn every day. While Age of Empires lives in my mind in the 90’s with Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves, we are seeing a new and unique landscape emerge of CryptoKitties, Animal Crossings, and Discord servers. Making sense and having a way to think about the landscape of the virtual world is important to me.
This was my attempt to frame how to think about the geography of the internet. This is where my thoughts are currently at, let me know what you think.
Below are questions I am thinking about to wrap my head around this idea of virtual geography and what it may mean.
Where do we feel at home on the internet?
What is familiar about a digital space?
Where do we feel out of sorts on the internet?
What is unfamiliar and novel about a digital space?
How can users see where they can go in a digital space?
How can users orient themselves in a digital space?
How can users explore digital spaces?
Thanks for reading, like this blog if you liked this blog!
Cheers to blog #4! Stoked to keep sharing with you all.
This newsletter is sponsored by → Oco Crew
This newsletter is written by Ben Sterne.