Nature of the Beast

Any representation of information has an inherent bias in the medium. Take maps, for example. Taking the earth, and displaying it in a 2D format requires you to make choices in how to display it. Those choices are the bias. I don't really think about this when I look at a map, and unless you're a cartographer, I assume you don't either. But personally, when I saw this map here, I realized just how large a bias I'd had (the other way never really did seem to be 2/3 water).

I see the internet kind of like a new kind of map. We get to recreate the world around us, and share it with everyone, but there's a bias. Through all the arguments about copyright holders and profits, and even the necessity of publishers, let us not forget that the very nature of the electronic medium is to let information flow freely. Something as simple as Ctrl+C is enough to reduplicate the entire life's work of an artist, or all the information of every major war in the past 20 years. While we must define how much information should flow, and how free it should be, it's going against the grain- free, unlimited content is the nature of the beast. The only price we pay for this freedom is that anyone with a laptop can get a little too much coverage- like my friend Vermin Supreme here. But that's something for another post. Vermin 2012!