Map of the Internet

On the first day of class one of the first comments made in the discussion we had about digital culture is the idea of the internet being "real estate." This idea fascinated me and I remembered a website I'd been to that tried to map out the internet.

The map is searchable both by country and by website. It was no surprise to me that Google had the most "real estate," but like I mentioned in my earlier post I was surprised by how small Netflix was. The reason for this is because I'd seen the statistic that Brandon posted about how Netflix makes up 1/4 of all internet traffic in North America. I assumed that other countries used Netflix like we do in the US, which would make Netflix bigger on the map, but apparently other countries don't use Netflix. I wonder what people in other countries use the internet for, whether it's keeping in contact with friends and family, watching video on YouTube or other sites, business, wasting time, etc...

Here's the link:

http://internet-map.net/

The maker of the website also gave a great summary of a lot of the things we've been discussing:

"The Internet global network is a phenomenon of technological civilization, and its exceptional complexity surpasses anything mankind has ever created. In essence, what we are dealing with here is a huge quantity of utterly unstructured information. The Internet map is an attempt to look into the hidden structure of the network, fathom its colossal scale, and examine that which is impossible to understand from the bare figures of statistics."

It's fascinating to me that there is a place that exists on earth that has essentially changed the world, yet none of us have been there (unless you're Kevin Flynn). Through the internet everyone can be connected, and this is the best map I've seen of how the internet is interconnected.