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are looking at the Internet as a whole, and have to realize that it is not so much a map for better navigation but a list of addresses with gaps, culs de sac and access constraints. Though in reality the Webcrawler's «softbots» captured only about 2% of the overall number of IP addresses for «1:1» at the given time, this was random-driven, non-linear sampling, and thus conveys an authentic image of the Internet. In other words, the Internet was also coined «Deep Web,» accessible to the public only as an excerpt.
The «softbots'» performance, as is also the case with Google, reflects a presence, but it is a one-way street. Jevbratt's system scans what is available and displays it in different ways in each case, dependening on the interface as well. Thus these programs promote our understanding of the Internet but do not redeem its promise of communicative presence. It was John Cage and Nam June Paik who introduced the participatory concepts of two-way communication, uncertainty and Random Access into art when art was starting to address recording and broadcasting media in the 1950s and 60s. Academics as well as artists are working on applying and implementing these concepts
today, trying to find new answers through ‹shared authorship›. The path leads from the static constellation, which Aby Warburg failed to conquer in his «Mnemosyne-Atlas,» to a dynamic, open but also controlled configuration of knowledge, relying in many cases on «fuzzy logic.» [45] Performativity and data-mining are key concepts for looking out over the dynamic, networked archive.
The implications of profiling will not be discussed here, though the interesting feature of this for the our present context is that a mapping system functions as a recording device only when it operates ‹secretly› (heimlich), and is thus linked with the ‹uncanny› (unheimlich), as Warren Sack points out. Claus Pias also expresses a suspicion that any image search project is consciously or unconsciously part of research conducted by intelligence services or the police, and thus has some highly problematical aspects. The «Firefly-Agent,» [46] developed by Pattie Maes at the MIT Media Lab, generates patterns on the basis of simple ratings that are then presented to the user for
