The internet is not a network for its own benefit - how to visualise the web

A quick image search on "visualising/ visualizing the web/internet" takes you to a practical view of what is there. 

 

A classic example is linked here - http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/visualizing_akamai.html

However, this does not really work as a visualisation or representation of the internet when taking about digital footprints -  so here is my interruption

There are activities we do, we create content, we consume content and we store data.  This some call  "life streams."  Data can come from things we do, a blog post or from data attached to a photo, location ( e.g active and passive) Other data will come from the machines taking to themselves.

What the internet/ web does is to take this data/ lifestream and making sense of it, create new value from the analysis. It creates a digital footprint based on what it knows about you (from what you say, from what others say and from what the data says)  The web creates "meta data" (data that describes your data) or intelligence  and from this we get services, some are value add and some are creepy - we know what you are doing and when.