What is the internet?

 Several hours ago, I read an advertisement that said: "The internet is the best place to buy an engagement ring." I paused. Are there simply no other linguistic alternative for this advertiser to tell people to buy things on the internet, or is the internet perhaps a place? This is weird, right? Even as I attempt to talk about the internet I can't avoid prepositional phrases like "on the internet," or "from the internet." Let's not forget about the term "cyberspace," either. It may be hard to think of the internet as a place, but it's equally difficult to nail it down as something concretely not a place. 

Consider: We used to shop in stores, now we shop on the internet. We used to get our mail from at the end of the driveway, now we get it on the internet. We used to play games in physical spaces with physical people, now competitors together occupy some sort of virtual common visual space and interact, despite being a million miles apart. Regardless of how you personally consider the internet, it's impossible to deny that we talk about it as if it were a place. 

Maybe it's possible to think of the internet as the very antithesis of place, but don't we feel the same kinds of familiarity with web locations that we do with places, as Professor Cannavo defines in his book? We navigate through them and even become upset when they are changed. What's more is that the internet as a virtual place is growing and, as Charlie Stross points out, permeating the physical world and blurring lines between what is virtual and what is actual:

Welcome to a world where the internet has turned inside-out; instead of being something you visit inside a box with a coloured screen, it’s draped all over the landscape around you, invisible until you put on a pair of glasses or pick up your always-on mobile phone. A phone which is to today’s iPhone as a modern laptop is to an original Apple II; a device which always knows where you are, where your possessions are, and without which you are — literally — lost and forgetful.

The Hamilton Admissions Office was recently applauded for printing a minimalist admissions poster that had only the name of the college and a quick response code. Anyone without a smart phone was left high and dry by this poster, but it's being hailed as progressive and forward thinking. 

So what to make of this? Are the two polarities of place--the real and the virtual--becoming one? What does this mean for our sense of relationship with the physical landscape? I can't help but wonder where we will be in ten years.

A lot of the inspiration from this post came from here.