Can One Contain A Cloud?

To open his article, ‘How To Follow Global Digital Cultures, Or Cultural Analytics For Beginners,’ Lev Manovich refers to the Internet as a “gigantic, global, not well organised, constantly expanding and changing information cloud.” The use of the word ‘cloud’ struck me, and it’s a metaphor that I intend to run with.

Picture a blue sky on a sunny day with a sufficient breeze, picture the pace at which the clouds move, evolve and change, and imagine trying to contain, capture or even document the movement of one individual puff of condensed water vapour, let alone a sky full of them. This task seems near impossible, just as I imagine any form of accurate documentation of analysis of the entirety of Internet would be. I enjoy Manovich’s imagining of a wall sized computer screen displaying real-time cultural flows around the world, and with the speed at which technology is continuously developing, I don’t deem this idea to be completely far-fetched. That being said, it would involve a reprogramming and re-imagining of The Internet that would need to be supported at a global level, and security is a huge issue in many countries.

If we are toying with this idea we need to ask ourselves exactly why. What purpose/s would this system serve? Yes, it will provide us with a visual representation of the cultural trends on a world-wide scale, but spend a day surfing the web and you can gauge a pretty good idea of what’s hot and what’s not. True, having this information may open doors to further research that can help us fine-tune and navigate our way through this great storm cloud, but I ask again, why? I know it can be frustrating when you’re desperately searching for a particular picture, or song, or article and you find yourself trawling through hours of irrelevant material, but who’s to say that you won’t find something even better on this search of yours?

I know we’ve all had a lonely Friday night in where we find our way to YouTube, or Wikipedia, or Google, and after a few clicks of ‘related articles,’ we find ourselves reading about Elephantiasis or watching videos of movie trailers for Hindi films that were released six years ago. The Internet is a labyrinth with no direct path but when you embrace the unknown instead of attempting to control it, you can get lost in a glorious maze of information and entertainment. Clouds certainly aren’t there to be contained, and I doubt they’d be anywhere near as enjoyable if they were stuck in a jar, just as I believe the Internet would lose a lot of its wonder were it to be regulated and documented. We humans have a lot of structure in our lives, let’s enjoy the uncertainty of the online world and allow ourselves to sidetrack into videos of drunk men cutting their girlfriend’s hair every once in a while.