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Global Network, Local Connection and the Interface Between
BY Jeremy Wood |
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Jeremy Wood is an MA student in the Media Studies program at the New School. His professional interests include information architecture, process optimization, usability, and user interaction/interface design.
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From data bit to data base, from workstation to World Wide Web, from local connection to global network, emerging information technologies and new media both address and reflect the same complex interplay of 'local' and 'global' which is at the heart of the concurrently emergent process of globalization. |
| The Global/Local Dynamic |
| Emerging information technologies and new media both exemplify and constitute a key component of the larger phenomenon of globalization. These technologies and media at once mirror and make possible both the formal structures and the functional processes - social and material - on which the overarching structure and process of globalization rests. The same (or parallel) dialectic of localizing and globalizing forces, patterns and effects which observers (from fields academic, popular, and professional) identify as key agents, trends, and examples of the process of globalization is equally evident and operational in the design and use of information technologies and new media, particularly those categorized as "web." The global/local dynamic is thus one of the key formal and functional considerations integral to the material and conceptual design and construction of the information technology medium. |
| Old
and New |
| A key difference between new information technologies and new media versus earlier information technology (including the telephone and telegraph) and earlier media (including print, photography, phonography, radio, television, and cinema) is that the new information technologies, as well as the new media which are integrally related to them, are designed and able to communicate or serve as medium (to 'mediate') not solely to, with, and between human audiences or end-users, but also to, with, and between themselves, and other information technologies and media, often independent of direct human involvement, reception, or end-use. The increasing application of this concept to the (already paradigm-shifting) information processing capabilities of the computer is now leading to such dramatic changes in size, scale, and scope of information access and processing possibilities that it is bringing about a further paradigm-shifting set of developments in all areas of technology and information. The resulting interconnected technology system brought about by these new developments is popularly known as "the web." |
| "The
Web" |
| "Web" is a popular term used to loosely describe anything related to this new set of developments and any and all information technologies and media related to it, that is to say, to this newly emerging information technology paradigm of connectivity and information communication among interconnected information technology 'agents'. In simplest terms, a "web" consists of a network, various independent information technology or human (or other?) agents (network points, network nodes, or "network hosts") within and across this network, and the set of connections or interfaces used to connect them, as well as the myriad structures and processes surrounding and enabling the many aspects of the function and use of this network and the successful connection, interface, and interaction of any of its agent nodes or parts across/by means of this network. The term "the web" may also be used to refer to the "World Wide Web" or the "Internet". "Web technology" thus refers loosely to any of the new technologies which comprise or are related to "the web," its technologies, its structures or processes, or its use. The (mediated) interconnection and interaction of multiple information technology agents across networks is one of the defining elements of contemporary information technology. The vast majority of information technology developments today - even those not specifically focused on dealing with "the web" - must to some extent be designed with some more or less direct relationship to "the web" - as the medium of information - in mind. |
| Network
Technology |
| A key element of the web paradigm is the development of network technology. Network technology is the technology of connection and transmission. Network technology (including network infrastructure) makes possible the connection and transmission of data of and from users, computers, applications, databases, and other agents or nodes to each other, of and from these nodes to networks, of and from networks to networks, of and from individual users, computers, applications, databases, and other nodes from within one network to those from within other networks. Connections can be one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many, or any varying combinations of these. Connection and transmission can be so fast and frequent as to create a near simultaneity of structure and function within, between, and across nodes and networks. Network technology makes behaviors occurring across the widest networks seem almost the same as those occurring on the smallest network or even within a single application or machine. Network technology and infrastructure thus creates a framework and mechanism for a kind of collective association of agents and activities across networks and nodes which allows for a nearly unrestricted spectrum of sizes, scales and scopes of structural association and functional operation (collective agency), with near simultaneity and across a nearly unlimited number of agents or nodes, as well as almost limitless distance in time and space. The key role of the network, then, is to mediate connection between information technology agents across all distances in time and space, and in precisely such a way as to make these distances - and thus the existence and mediating function of the network itself - close to unnoticeable. The goal of network technology, then, is to create virtual immediacy in time and space between otherwise (realtime/realspace) distant information technology agents; to mediate connection between them in such a way that the medium itself - the network - seems to disappear and the connection appears 'im-mediate' in both the figurative sense of 'direct and unseparated proximity in space and time', and in the literal sense of 'un-mediated' or 'without mediation/medium'. The more efficient and effective the connection, the more invisible the medium of connection becomes. |
| From
Local Network to Global Internet |
| Network infrastructure and technology are designed to facilitate the seamless incorporation and simultaneous collective functioning of a theoretically limitless range of nodes, ranging across all sizes, scales, and scopes - from "personal -" or "local area networks" ("PANs" or "LANs"), to "wide area networks" ("WANs"), to large-scale "internets" (multiple series of connected networks). As the possibilities of size, scale, and scope of networks expand, so, too, do the potentials of size, scale, and scope of collective interconnection, association and operation of the individual agents/nodes on or within that network - from single computer to entire network. As the world's physical network infrastructure grows towards a fully global scale, so, too, do the possibilities for global connection and association and collective global functional operation - that is, the association and operation of the entire global network as a single, unified information system. "The Internet" itself (capital "I") is no more than this imagined sum total of all (inter-) connected data transmission networks around the globe - the global network. |
| Tendencies
of Scale and Scope |
| Through network technology and "the web," data and information can now be collected, stored, transmitted (distributed, retrieved, shared, collected), and processed (interpreted and made sense of) both with increasingly localized detail and depth, and on an increasingly global (and globalizing) scale and scope. The internet theoretically places this entire global information technology network within immediate reach of each local network connection. This has a dual effect. As expanding network and web development is creating increasingly global potentials for size, scale, and scope of data, it is also decreasing the readiness and ease with which this data can be reasonably handled, stored, transmitted, processed, interpreted, and made sense and use of by the local agents of which the network is comprised. That is to say, on the one hand, the greater the quantity and scope of data collected and stored, the greater the (theoretical) informational potential at hand; on the other hand, the greater the quantity and scope of the data available, the less readily usable or easily comprehensible that data becomes. Both of these effects can be seen not only in the analytical processing and use of the data, but also in the limitations of the basic material aspects of the technology - from questions of memory and transmission/bandwidth capacities to technical differences between different (i.e. competing, incompatible) data/file formats, browsers, or mark-up, scripting and programming languages. |
| Web
Standards |
Web technologies - and a substantial segment of the web development community - address the issues which arise in relation to the expanding sizes, scales, and scopes of data and information, which network technology is increasingly making possible, through the increasing implementation of formal and functional standards for the networked mediation/communication of data. Standards governing the mediating operation of networks and the classification and structuring of the data transmitted to, from, and between agents and across networks form the basis for the successful communication of data which enables the near immediacy of connection and collectivity and near simultaneity of structure and function, which is a key component of network technology as discussed above. Web standards are thus being designed from an increasingly global perspective, to facilitate the fast, efficient, and effective communication of information across disparate and disparately organized/functioning information systems within the increasingly global information network. These standards are also being implemented with increasing frequency and precision on the local level, in the design and construction of databases, applications, websites, or other information systems/agents, to increasingly enable the meaningful incorporation and use by these agents of data from the network and other agents on the network. The frequent and precise implementation of standards locally allows for increasingly intense integration of these individual/local information technology agents with each other, across networks, and so into the global network, i.e. by effectively decreasing the degree of technical disparities across agents and across networks. The development of global standards for the mediated communication of data and the local implementation of these standards thus form a key aspect of web design and construction. Successful web design and development increasingly rests in this sense on the extent to which the designer or developer can "design globally, implement locally," that is, the extent to which, in the development of the specific local application, the designer/developer can also consistently bear in mind and put into effect "the consciousness of the.." web ".. as a whole" (Robertson, 1992; from Editorial Statement). |
| Classification
and Structured Relationships of Association |
| Standards (protocols) for the handling and transmission of data are crucial to the successful communication of data across the network. Standards for the structuring and classification of data are the key element in the successful reception, interpretation, and use of that data by local agents. Standards for the classification of data and the definition of structured relationships of association between/among data and information provide the basis for various mechanisms of functional operation for the meaningful communication - transmission, storage, processing, presentation, etc. - of data across networks, including its reception and interpretation for use by and between the information technology agents which constitute the network. One of the most popularly known examples of standards-based web technology is HTML, which provides a basic means of structuring text through classification of various text elements (characters, words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and others) and definition of various structured relationships of association between these elements, both generally and in specific instances. Classifications include everything from which characters or words will be italic or bold and what font style and size they will be, to which sentences constitute paragraphs, which words will be paragraph or section headings, which words will be links - and to which other words, paragraphs, or pages they will link, and which text will appear on which browser 'page'. Relationships of association, which are also intimately bound up with classification, include: which headings belong to which paragraph or section, which hyper- or navigational link leads to which other text location or new browser page, and which browser page was the "previous" page and which will be "next." These are just some of the most readily identifiable and understandable examples of how classification and structured relationships of association are used in web technology and design to enable the meaningful communication of data. The implementation of these data classifying and structuring methods extends however far, far further and deeper than such basic examples of text mark-up in HTML; in fact, it is a key element of web technology and design across all technologies and at all levels. The more global the scale and scope of the standards, and the more thoroughly and effectively these standards are incorporated at the local level, the greater the potential for effective communication of information across global networks and the better able the local information technology agent will be to interpret and use the information available. The more effective the integration of data and information technology standards, the greater the potential for integration of data and information technology agents across networks, space, and time. Standards are thus the key to developing the web as a medium for the communication of information - the global/local network which is both global in scale and scope and locally available and usable. Standards are of particular importance in the design and construction of the key point of intersection between this (global) network and its (local) agent(s): the web interface. |
| The
Interface |
| The interface is the site of this mediation between (the global) information network and (the local) information agent: where local data from the local machine/agent is collected, interpreted, and translated for communication across the global network to be re-translated and re-interpreted for local application/use on another local machine/by another local agent. The interface relies on web standards to mediate the transmission of data between agents, and to translate between data formats used at different stages and levels within the transmission/communication process: from data as it is handled on a global level to data as it is handled on a more local scale, for various specific data processing, presentation, or other application purposes. The mediating roles of the interface can range from technical translation between different programming languages, protocols, or codes, to the interpretation of HTML to create text and image formatting and layout in the browser window, to the operations of search engines, blogs, link lists, and other tools aimed at the navigation, orientation, and sensical interpretation and use of information and data from the web for specific local agents and purposes. With the help of standards-based technologies, the interface thus mediates communication to, from and via the web to, from and between the local machine/agent and the other machines/agents which constitute the global network / web, i.e. the connection and communication from individual browsers, computers, systems, applications, and devices (or other information technology agents) to the web and, through the web, to each other. In this sense, the interface mediates between and among specific, individual, local agents, as well as, in more general terms, between the local machine and the (global) network. The web interface is thus a key site of intersection and interface between the (global) network and the (local) information technology agent, and thus between that which tends towards the global and that which tends towards the local within the larger context of web technology and the web medium. The dynamics of this intersection between the global and the local aspects of the web are mediated by the interface. |
| The Interface as Information Medium |
| The interface mediates the effective communication (for meaningful interpretation and use) of information from the global network to the local machine, application, or user, and of local information from the local user, application, or machine back into the global network. All information passing to or from the network or web, back and forth between the network and its agents, must do so through or by means of the interface - whichever specific interface this might be. In this sense, the interface may itself be characterized as the medium of communication on and across the web, i.e. the medium of information, through which information is communicated across the global network, which mediates information between individual nodes/agents and each other and the network, and which mediates between the local machine/end-user/agent and the global network of users/agents. In this sense, the interface itself is the new 'information medium': the medium through which information is accessed and agency and influence are exercised; in the perception of the end-user, the embodiment of information itself. The term "new media" refers to a specific set of particular forms or instances of this information medium, the interface, i.e. those interfaces which provide "the technologically-enabled means for creating and disseminating messages" (from Editorial Statement) which are directed at the human audience/end-user, rather than information directed towards some other information technology agent. (There can be many varieties of network or web interface - not limited solely to human users, but also for applications, systems, computers, etc.) The construction of the web interface is in this sense the construction of the new information medium itself. |
| 'The New Local', Web and Information 'Location', 'Virtual Locality' |
| In providing the point of connection to and mediation between the local user and the global network, this intersection of the global and the local which is embodied in the web interface also increasingly forms the basis for a new experience, understanding, and definition of location and locality, which is rooted in the realm of this information medium, new information technology and the web. In contrast to the old, independently defined physical 'locality' of (real-)space and (real-)time, this new kind of 'local' defines itself not in terms of direct physical locality (or immediacy, or connection) or spatial location (or chronology), but in terms of its (more or less direct) relationship(s) to the web: to the total collective of other local agents which comprise the total global network to which it is immediately connected via the web, as well as to the data and information (information medium) to which it has immediate access at any given moment via these agents and this network. By mediating access to other local agents the interface determines which information is immediately accessible to any given local agent at any given moment; in so doing the interface defines the virtual location of the agent (user) within the global information medium, that is to say, it determines 'where' 'on the web' the local user, machine, or application 'is.' Through this interface is constructed a (changing) information location through which the local agent experiences and takes information from the global information network and other agents on it, and by means of which the global information network and its constituent agents assess and place and take information from the local agent - i.e. through which the two-way interaction between global and local entities on the web occurs. Locality and position are defined in terms of their relative relation to / place within the information medium itself. 'The interface' itself can therefore be characterized in this sense as a new kind of virtual location - defining the selected range of information and agents which are immediately accessible to - and thus virtually local to - the local user, machine, etc. The web interface is thus a key instance of "the materialization [of globalization] in particular contexts, which in turn open out 'back' into the global" (from Editorial Statement). The global network and the local connection together provide the structural and functional basis for this new kind of local / locality / location, which occurs at the global/local intersection that defines and is dynamically embodied by the interface. The web interface itself becomes in this sense a site of the dynamic interplay between the global and the local: it exists "Janus-like" (from Editorial Statement) at the intersection of the two; it is simultaneously both local and global. Within the larger structure and process of globalization as a whole, the web (in general) and the web interface (in specific) thus constitute a key site from and through which to examine the dynamic interplay of the local and global in the larger framework of globalization (not only as a practical tool for news, research, and information access, but as a subject for theoretical inquiry in and of itself!). |
| The Global/Local Interface, 'Virtual Locality', and 'the New Information Medium' |
The interface itself thus represents both a new (information) medium and a new kind of (virtual) (information) local / location / locality, which defines itself in relation to the global information network, and in terms of virtual location within the information medium/information space itself. In this sense, we might also say that this new information medium - "new media" - can itself be seen as the medium from, with, and within which this new kind of locality is constructed. The information medium is thus the site and fabric of "the new local" - a virtual locality which exists at the intersection of the global and the local, which defines itself in terms of the global network of which it is a part and the information medium in which it is 'situated' / of which it is made, and which is both captured and constructed in and through the design and construction of the information medium of the web interface. If this is true, it means that, through the design and construction of interface technology and specific material interfaces and interface systems, web technology and web designers and technologists are actually both architecting and constructing the new information medium - "new media", as well as architecting and constructing this new type of local / location / locality. (For those living in the networked world), as "the web" becomes increasingly integrated into (and integrative of!) all (or at least many) diverse aspects of our lives, the effects of this dynamic are of increasing impact to all areas of life. The web increasingly becomes the site of interpretation and translation not only of lifeless 'data' but of actual vital information and 'real' (or virtually real?) experience. In this scenario, the interface - between human user and computer, between the computer and the network or other computer, between the computer and other devices (cell phone? palm pilot? washing machine?) increasingly becomes the site of negotiation of information and experience of - to some degree - reality itself. In the sense that each specific interface operates under its own set of processes, rules and restrictions (with which it has been architected and programmed), the interface in general becomes the designed and programmed arbiter of both information and experience, of the access and interpretation of information and experience by human users, and, thus, to some degree, of our own perceptions and experiences of reality, at the least in as far they can (increasingly) be said to be tied (more or less directly or indirectly) to the operation of the web. The interface in this sense becomes the point of negotiation of information and experience from which our very real perceptions and experiences of both 'the global' world we live in, as accessed by the web, and our own location and sense of locality within it (defined, in part, by our experience of the web interface!) derive. Because information technology - via the internet, the web, and all manner of local computing/electronic devices and applications - is, in a materially and socially very real sense, the medium through which many individuals (at least within certain spheres) interact with, experience, perceive, define, and exert influence and agency in the global world as well as their own local sphere of it, the construction of the global/local interface in information technology / web development / new media is thus a key component of the construction and operation of two important elements of the larger phenomenon of globalization: a new (global) information medium and a new kind of locality and local experience, as well as the dynamic interaction between the two - between global information and local experience.
The global/local dialectic is thus one of the key formal and functional considerations integral to the design and construction of the information technology medium. From data bit to data base, from workstation to World Wide Web, from local connection to global network, emerging information technologies and new media both address and reflect the same complex interplay of 'local' and 'global' which is at the heart of the concurrently emergent process of globalization. |
| DEFINITIONS: |
network: (from Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1983) n. 1. any arrangement or fabric of parallel wires, threads, et. crossed at regular intervals by others fastened to them... 2. a thing resembling this in some way, specifically (a) a system of crossed roads, canals, etc.; (b) in radio and television, a chain of transmitting stations ... operated as a unit
(from http://www.techdictionary.com) A group of interconnected computers, including the hardware and software used to connect them.
connection: (from Webster's) n. 1. the act of joining, or state of being joined; a state of being knit or fastened together; union. 2. that which connects or unites; a tie; a bond; means of joining 3. a relation; association; specifically, (a) the relation between things that depend on, involve, or follow each other; (b) the logical linking together of words or ideas; coherence 8. in electricity, a circuit 9. in telephony and telegraphy, a line of communication from one point to another
(from techdictionary.com) Interconnection in which communication proceeds through three phases: connection establishment, data transfer, connection release. Examples: ordinary telephone calls, Internet TCP.
(from w3c.org glossary) A transport layer virtual circuit established between two programs for the purpose of communication.
mediate: (from Webster's) v.i. 1. to be in an intermediate position or location 2. to be an intermediary or conciliator between persons or sides v.t. 2. to be the medium for bringing about (a result), conveying (an object), communicating (information), etc. [also] a. 1. intermediate or intervening 2. dependent on, acting by, or connected through some intervening agency; related indirectly: opposed to immediate medium: (from Webster's) n. 2. an intervening thing through which a force acts or an effect is produced; as, the ether is a supposed medium for radio waves. 3. any means, agency, or instrumentality; as, radio is a medium of communication. 5. environment. 6. any material used for expression or delineation in art; as, this sculptor's favorite medium is stone.
(from http://www.techdictionary.com)
interface: (from Webster's) n. 2. a point or means of interaction between two systems, disciplines, groups, etc.
(from techdictionary.com) 1. A shared boundary where two or more systems meet; or the means by which communication is achieved at this boundary. An interface can be between hardware and hardware (such as sockets and plugs, or electrical signals), hardware and software, software and software, human and computer (such as a mouse or keyboard and display screen). 2. A shared boundary across which information is passed. A hardware or software component that connects two or more other components for the purpose of passing information from one to another. 3. A common boundary between automatic data processing systems or parts of a system defined by common physical interconnection characteristics, signal characteristics, and meanings of interchanged signals.
(from w3c.org) 1. The boundary between components through which they interact. |
| CITATIONS, SOURCES, LINKS, NOTES: |
| Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (Second Edition). Simon and Schuster; New York. 1983 http://www.techdictionary.com http://www.w3c.org |