Why do I think of websites as locations?

July 20, 2005 11:34 AM

I've noticed I have this habit of thinking of different websites in terms of direction and location rather than just a URL.

For instance, one of my webmail accounts seems to be ahead and to the left when I'm sitting in front of a computer. Metafilter is a step above ground level, and AskMe is two rungs up a ladder in a wall. My company's website is above and to my left, and my primary webmail account is straight ahead.

The question is twofold: does anyone else do this, and why might someone do it?

posted by staresbynight to computers & internet (14 comments total)

There was a thread about a month ago on this exact thing! But I can't find it. Anyone?
posted by Specklet at 11:43 AM on July 20, 2005

I can't find it either! I think it was on MetaTalk ... still looking.
posted by librarina at 11:50 AM on July 20, 2005

I do this too.. I didn't realize it until you mentioned it.. but I associate sites I visit with a direction also...


really wierd.
posted by jackofsaxons at 11:52 AM on July 20, 2005

Here it is!
posted by librarina at 11:54 AM on July 20, 2005

looks like it was hidden under the bed
posted by blue_beetle at 12:03 PM on July 20, 2005

Just a question; have you ever been diagnosed with synaestesia? It doesn't entirely follow in my head that one would lead to the other, but I'm curious.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 12:20 PM on July 20, 2005

I haven't done this with websites, but the months of the year follow a diagonal line up to the right and then drop down again in January - in my head.
posted by garbo at 12:41 PM on July 20, 2005

dfleming: never diagnosed with it, but I sometimes make odd associations between colors and sounds or colors and smells. It's very minor and doesn't happen often, so I don't get the full "this tastes blue!" effect that others do.
posted by staresbynight at 1:59 PM on July 20, 2005

In my odd little brain, the letter A is red, B is tan, C is blue, D is dark brown, E is green, and so on...
posted by gottabefunky at 2:11 PM on July 20, 2005

I find that I do something like this more often now that I use tabbed browsing. Before when you had a separate full-screen window for every website they did not seem to exist in the same "universe" if that makes any sense.
posted by keijo at 4:26 PM on July 20, 2005

Yep -- this is totally synaesthetic. To our brains, cyberspace is space.

Perhaps you can even compare it to spatial awareness of intellectual content in a book or magazine. For isntance, you may go looking for a quote you liked in a book, and rather than remember it by page number or plot point, you kind of remember it on a left-hand page a third of the way down, after a long paragraph, in the last quarter of the book.

I do it too. Sites tend to be located along trails that lead one to another, with some tunnels and shortcuts thrown in the mix.
posted by Miko at 5:09 PM on July 20, 2005

sidenote (sorry) - this happens to some degree with me also. I've thought on & off that it would be interesting to have a spatially aware browser... would anyone be interested in talking about ideas for one?
posted by devilsbrigade at 5:46 PM on July 20, 2005

I don't particularly get a directional feel on the Internet, but on the old GEnie online service, I can tell you that the A2Pro RoundTable was definitely to the right of the A2 RoundTable, while Mail was wayyyyy off to the left of both of them.
posted by kindall at 8:44 PM on July 20, 2005

The "up a rung" idea probably has something to do with the fact that you came to AskMefi from Mefi. We're trained to conceptualize file-systems in terms of space by modern operating systems. In DOS days, command.com was always "above" format.com . Space is just the easiest organizational system our brain has for these kinds of new environments. The people at the Gnome project even have a an official "spatially organized" folder view in which all of the folders you open persist where they were open last time you opened them.

Not entirely sure on the left-right designations. But I know that MetaTalk is "between" Mefi and AskMefi for me.
posted by ontic at 11:46 AM on July 21, 2005