initial commit

content/blog/the-lovecraftian-internet.md

@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+---
+title: The Lovecraftian Internet
+date: 2025-04-05
+---
+
+# The Lovecraftian Internet
+
+The web we know is spun by gluttonous spiders no longer satiated by flies and
+roaches. They cast their net wide across the world, like cuckoos they lay their
+parasitic eggs inside our lives. They fondle our brains until our DNA is
+infested with algorithms, our ribcages become mainframes and our eyes turn into
+screens.
+
+<div class="image-container">
+<img src="/static/images/hrgiger.png" alt="A dithered monochrome image of HR Giger's Li II (1976)">
+
+<small><a href="https://www.pixography.art/post/117714084121/hr-giger-li-i-ii-1974-li-tobler-1948">Li
+II, H.R. Giger, 1976.</a></small>
+
+</div>
+
+No more.
+
+The spores are already sprouting, recycling the decaying corporate internet into
+binary compost.
+
+The internet is incomprehensively massive. Conservative estimates claim at least
+**4.2 billion** indexed webpages.<sup>1</sup> _Indexed_, in this context, means
+publicly accessible individual webpages that can be found on a search engine
+because [web crawlers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler) can reach
+them. This is known as the **surface web**.
+
+The figure doesn't account for the rest of the internet: private resources
+hidden behind firewalls, internal webpages and services, e-mail traffic, IoT
+devices, direct messages, video game servers, media & file storage, just to name
+a few. These are all part of the **deep web**: the portion of the internet that
+cannot be indexed by search engines.
+
+<div class="image-container">
+<img src="/static/images/datacenter2-d.jpg" alt="A dithered grayscale image of a datacenter">
+
+<small><a href="https://flic.kr/p/7xhNmM">Leonardo Rizzi, 2010.</a></small>
+
+</div>
+
+No one knows the true size of the deep web. It's impossible to even guess.
+According to the BBC,<sup>2</sup> the "big four" store _at least_ **1.2 million
+terabytes** of data. So even before we consider the fairly recent eruption of AI
+and the sprawling datasets and models that came with it, that's already
+<strong>9.6 x 10<sup>18</sup></strong> bits of data. That's more ones and zeros
+than grains of sand on Earth.<sup>3</sup>
+
+The internet is a
+[Lovecraftian](https://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/bestiary.aspx) entity in
+scale, tangibility, and perceptibility. Clearly, this web was not spun by an
+itsy-bitsy spider.
+
+---
+
+# References
+
+1. [WorldWideWebSize](https://www.worldwidewebsize.com/)
+2. [ScienceFocus Magazine](https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-much-data-is-on-the-internet)
+3. [NPR](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/09/17/161096233/which-is-greater-the-number-of-sand-grains-on-earth-or-stars-in-the-sky)