{"id":1784,"date":"2009-11-16T14:14:04","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T19:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/?p=1784"},"modified":"2009-11-21T10:05:32","modified_gmt":"2009-11-21T15:05:32","slug":"is-the-web-suburban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2009\/11\/16\/is-the-web-suburban\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the web suburban?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"powells-9780865476066\" href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/34555\/biblio\/9780865476066?p_cv\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/bookcovers\/9780865476066.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"120\" height=\"121\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/34555\/biblio\/9780865476066\">Suburban Nation<\/a> (thanks Sherri) and it made me look at new media ecologies with a city planning eye.\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder, is the web suburban?\u00c2\u00a0 Do we have memorable, open commons or digital cul-de-sacs?\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly, many government sites like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.illinoistollway.com\/\">Illinois Tollway site<\/a> quickly feel like I&#8217;m getting lost or running into dead ends.\u00c2\u00a0 Are online retailers generally becoming more like mom and pop stores or big boxes?\u00c2\u00a0 While the architecture of the web certainly allows for multiple routes through and across sites (akin to traditional city streets), typical navigation structures tend be tree-like which seem more like the disorienting and disconnected street patterns of subdivisions.\u00c2\u00a0 Are big infrastructure centers like Google or Amazon like suburban <em>collector roads<\/em>?\u00c2\u00a0 Is this city planning model even a capable metaphor for thinking about information ecologies?<\/p>\n<p>Subdivision photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.futureatlas.com\/blog\">futureatlas.com<\/a> via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/87913776@N00\/4006681320\/\">Flickr<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reading Suburban Nation (thanks Sherri) and it made me look at new media ecologies with a city planning eye.\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder, is the web suburban?\u00c2\u00a0 Do we have memorable, open commons or digital cul-de-sacs?\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly, many government sites like the Illinois Tollway site quickly feel like I&#8217;m getting lost or running into dead&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2009\/11\/16\/is-the-web-suburban\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Is the web suburban?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[628],"tags":[758,757,178,756,680,759],"class_list":["post-1784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-ecology","tag-information","tag-planning","tag-suburban","tag-tweetit","tag-web","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-sM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1801,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions\/1801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}