Web Without World: How Disconnections Make Things Real

Overview & Synopsis

Contrary to the assumption that the Web is what its acronym implies, a "World Wide Web" extending as a continuously connected space, this talk argues that it operates through disconnections, i.e., spatiotemporal distances, fragmented data, language gaps, and missing information. Moreover, I argue that the fragmentation of data into specified and addressable units is precisely what makes web documents intelligible rather than undermining their reality. First, drawing on the distinction between extensive and mediate connection, I show that Web resources are not causally or spatiotemporally fixed, but generated by acts of reference. Then, extending this analysis to the social ontology developed by New Realism (Ferraris, Gabriel), I argue that disconnections are not obstacles to meaning and communities, but the condition of possibility for their recording and documental mediation. Finally, I conclude by considering the political stakes of disconnection through the notion of "digital divide". Disconnection also implies unequal access to connectivity and exclusion from the documentary capital that digital mediation produces. A challenge the Webfare project should directly address.