Global Internet Map by Blue Coat
“The Internet Map, which is based on data from Global Internet Geography from TeleGeography research, illustrates the key Internet connections that link the countries and the five major regions of the world. Regional close-up maps detail the primary intra-regional Internet routes in Europe, Asia, North and Latin America, and Africa.
Accompanying figures and tables provide valuable insight into regional Internet metrics, including international Internet bandwidth, Internet traffic growth, IP transit pricing trends, and broadband subscriber growth”.
Web 2.0 suicide
“Unfriend” became Oxford’s Word of the Year 2009, and over the last week I can confirm many of my social network contacts have encountered virtual dilemmas, aware or not of Oxford’s choice. The trend dilemma seems to be:
- “I add someone as a friend” or “I confirm someone as a friend” (both, then, beeing active decisions).
- I feel annoyed by the fact that this people I now consider “friends” are not giving me as much feedback as they would in real life.
- Taking advantage of the pretended distance Internet gives, and the possibility to communicate massive messages, I post an incendiary status update threatening silent people in my news feed with a determined will to delete all those contacts that appear to be just watching my conversations instead of participating on them.
In my opinion, we haven’t had the time to think which use we want to give to, let’s say, Facebook. We love having lot’s of friends and being able to communicate with all of them easily, even to distribute an ideal self through tagged pictures and cool statuses. Most don’t master the art of privacy and ignore lists of friends related to a specific limited profile. We get to the point in which we believe people only add or accept us as friends in order to broaden the list.
Does it really matter? For me, what’s important is the connections you establish and how much access you give to them. A social network is not real life, and for instance, I don’t accept people I don’t know (in real of virtual life). I don’t have the need to talk to all of them, but the value for me is being able to easily contact them if I feel like it, or just be in the know. Of course one can choose to have a really closed and elitist network of real life close friends, but in my opinion that’s not Facebook in it’s full potential.
All those who get too much trouble with virtual dilemmas, can always commit virtual suicide and disappear completely from Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Twitter. Grab the Ethernet rope an voilà! Disconnected.
Phrases that could soon be history?
Last week, Steve Rubel brought to my attention the Oxford University Press word of the year 2009: “unfriend”. Along with his announcement, Rubel expressed his thoughts around “media reforestation” and “common phrases that could soon be history”. Above are two examples by him (of the 10 he exposes), but the comments section to his post give some other good examples, like “dial the telephone”.
My first thought on this is language does change with habits and tools (I love Oxford University Press’ choice of the year) but the majority of current adult citizens still understand what a “broken record” is, or to what we refer when we talk about a “walking encyclopedia” when Wikipedia is probably the encyclopedia with the larger number of feet ever. A few years from now Rubel’s approach will be even more relevant because our yongest adults will flip at the fact that we had to hold several 2Kg encyclopedia volumes to look up for concepts that were “far away” in the alphabet.
The times, they are a-changin’.
![From the September 2009 edition of “Did You Know?”.
[Via labnol.org]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kq46hwq5Eb1qa3ktro1_500.jpg)
How long would it take to read the whole internet?
It would take 57,000 years according to these info-graphs which probably don’t include Twitter, Facebook status updates and private blogs. I mean, those would keep you occupied until the end of time.
