Today, we are bombarded with information. Millions of bits–photos, text, video–stream by us every second we’re on the web. And we’re always on the web. Mobile devices on 3G (and now “4G”) and lightweight laptops able to access nearly ubiquitous WiFi hotspots mean that the modern age is certainly the information age. And the Internet continues to grow riotously; like a tropical rain forest, millions of unique niches exist, but they are inhabited here instead by users and data. And much like a natural ecosystem, the internet is also inextricably interlinked and interdependent: hyperlinks, reference pointers, and social media make the Internet a pseudo-organic entity that has its gaze turned not only outward (towards expansion) but also inward (towards connections). In its own way, the internet is an oddly beautiful thing. The freewheeling, ever-shifting topography of the web means that from second-to-second it’s never quite the same place.

But for all its seductive beauty and facile utility, we often overlook the more subtle effects of the Internet and the disanalogies that crop up when we compare the Internet and the real world around us. For one, the Internet is, by its nature, parasitic. It relies on photographs, videos, and stories that depict the real natural beauty (or, ugliness) around us and that come from real experiences. A lush jungle world in a video game, an “aquatic” themed Internet browser skin, or a collage of the world’s wonders on an online forum all ultimately derive from our own experiences with and wonder at Earth’s natural face. In a sense, all the copies, expansions, and imitations of exotic or awe-inspiring flora and fauna on the Internet are attempts to capture and celebrate the diversity of life and form on earth itself. We, almost unconsciously, take as a blueprint for other worlds and possibilities the concrete aspects and attributes of the world we already live in now. But in cyberspace (and our cramped fourteenth floor apartments) it’s easy to forget that the sheer joy we feel when clicking through images of life and geography is present 10-fold in the witnessing of these actual places, plants and creatures themselves, and that these places need protecting too if we’re to pass on this “blueprint” of wonder to future generations.

Niagara Falls

Secondly, and more dangerously, the Internet provides a landscape for us in which all things are reproducible. The nature of data means that an infinite number of copies of anything online can be spawned quickly and at low cost. This ease of replication, in conjunction with our ability to freely edit this data in convincing and engaging ways, means that “uniqueness” as we know it is entirely abrogated in the online world. A photograph is easily converted into pixels, each pixel with its own tag indicating its position and color. It’s incredibly easy to alter these bits of data and entirely change, or make anew, the scene that the image portrays. While we’ve all become skeptical in this age of Photoshop, there are few limits on what one can do if one can produce images convincingly.

But human beings thrive in “singularity,” if you will–the uniqueness, specificity, and singular nature of what we encounter in the world. We delight in and attribute value to those things which we find unique: a single crystalline rose bud, an exquisitely spotted and colored frog, or the heady spectacle of Niagara Falls all give us pause because we revel in the special circumstances of the world that has allowed us to confront such singular beauty or majesty. We move through the world taking pleasure in the instances in which nature divulges a “secret” to us: we don’t pick up ordinary sea shells on the beach, but instead search for the striated, whirled beauties. No average rock will satiate our curiosity; it is those which bear crystals, bands of color, or something that sets them apart from the rest that grab our attention. But the web in a sense removes the “uniqueness” from these events; uniqueness becomes omnipresent and thus not really present at all. We forget the sorts of encounters that nature gives us that made these things wonderful in the first place. If the real-world events that give significance to their online reproductions were to be lost, it would not be long before the online copies lost their meaning too. It’s obvious that the Internet’s not all bad. After all, it is what allows us to come together and have discussions like we do here. My only plea might be that we not forget what’s outside of cyberspace.