ABSTRACT
If I say, “the Web”—casual shorthand for “the World Wide Web,” itself a dubiously loose way of talking about certain things possible within Hypertext Transport (HTTP) and Internet Protocol (IP)—you will probably form some immediate set of impressions. These may involve vast, trackless information spaces (the abstract or topological Web), or more likely, particular features in this indeterminate expanse (“pages,” “sites,” “channels,” “portals”). Clearly the first alternative will not suffice. To speak of the World Wide Web as pure abstraction confers no more understanding than thinking about “the telephone” or “radio” or even “network television” in such imprecise terms. The many objects and interests caught up in the technologique of WWW/HTTP/IP can hardly be glossed so simply. They constitute something that is more event than object, more subjectivity than subject, more a network of bewildering particulars than a system of generalized content.
