Loosely Assembled

How have people organized information over the centuries, and millennia? Are we predisposed toward more ‘linear’ or more ‘digital’ forms? How long have we been trying to cope with the problem of information overload? Are hierarchical trees a fundamental paradigm rooted in our own reproduction? How many times has the internet already been invented? How can we reinvent it again? How can we get enough distance from it to see it clearly?

In the 1890s and 1900s Paul Otlet designed and built a network where organized data could be explored, via “links” and a “web”.

via information architect and writer Alex Wright during a particularly good SALT lecture.

Thinking through a way to fund a free web domain service for art projects. Maybe grant funded and limited to social practices kinds of work, or perhaps a partnership with a registrar/hosting service that acts like a gateway drug?

Or actually, imagine a speculation based service: you get free domains for a year, but the service actually owns the domain, at the end of the year, if the project is going well, you will pay a higher fee to buy the domain from the service.

The service watches stats/traffic on that domain and determines price based on that value.

It’s not even really the issue of paying for a new domain with each idea, it’s the hassle of the process. Maybe a prepaid bundle of domains would be a better way to think about this? Some service offers you domains by the dozen, for cheap, you prepay, and can create/get those dozen in any quantity at any time over the established time period. Like all pre pay models, part of the sustainability of this would be the assumption that not all prepaid domains would be claimed/used.

I simply think more artists need to be on the web, doing work that works well with the web.