byChris Bowers, Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 01:00:08 PM EST
This image has been stuck in my mind for years (I'm not kidding), but I am glad someone finally recorded it for others to see. This is the blogosphere:
The largest white dot in the center is Dailykos. Considering our stratospheric Technorati ranking, one of the large white dots close to it must be MyDD. Our size will vary depending on whether this picture measures total incoming links (in which case we would be very large), or the number of sites sending incoming links (in which case we would be a little smaller).
Whatever it measures, this image, from Matthew Hurst in the current issue of Discover magazine, which I read religiously as a child, is stunningly beautiful. It even allows you to see the smaller blogospheres within the larger blogosphere. I wonder which blogosphere each cluster represents. Perhaps, gossip blogs in the lower right, tech blogs in the upper portion and slightly to the right? I was always convinced there was an experiential aspect of participation in the blogosphere that is profound, aesthetic and sublime, but I have never done a satisfactory job of putting it into words. My first serious attempt in that regard was a long poem called Warblog, which I abandoned at about the same time I began blogging full-time on MyDD (the methodology of Warblog can be seen here). This image serves as a useful touchstone to return to that line of thought.
This is an open thread on the culture and beauty of the blogosphere. Think of it as a more flexible form of the old MyDD Poetry Fridays.
