One of the great paragraphs from Chapter 2 of Small Pieces Loosely Joined

But on the Web we experience something we can never experience in the real world: places without space. Instead of needing a containing space to enable movement, the Web has hyperlinks. Links are at the heart of the Web and the Web’s spatiality. The fact that the linked pages come from many people turns the Web into a place larger than we are. It is a public place, a place we can enter, wander, and get lost, but cannot own.” Since place and space have been inseparable in all of our experience in the real world until now, when we experience the Web’s place-ness, we assume that it must also have the usual attributes of spatiality, including the accidental nature of geography. That makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that what holds the Web together isn’t a carpet of rock but the world’s collective passion.

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