MacUser Internet Road Map.

COMPUTING.

Published by New York: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1995

An uncommon example of early internet cartography, documenting some of the first sources available on the web, with an emphasis on the Apple ecosystem. The map, designed and folded in imitation of a traditional road map, was one of several made available to purchasers of MacUser magazine and promised that, "with a little patience and a spirit of adventure, you can surf the Internet like an expert". On the recto, a Mac sits at the centre of the map, surrounded by six zones representing six subject categories: Arts and Humanities, Government Information, Macintosh Resources, Business and Commerce, Internet Reference, and Education and Reference. The text is sized and colour-coded variously to indicate major and minor sites of interest. The verso features a legend and an index, a guide to navigating the map, a breakdown of the "Anatomy of a URL", and instructions for connecting to the Internet. Users are notified that "Internet hype is everywhere, but knowing that the White House is on-line won't do you much good if you aren't connected to the Net. make the most of the information explosion". Definitions are given for key terminology: the World Wide Web, for example, is described as "the much publicized hypertext document system to which you can gain access through Mosaic". Some of the chosen map highlights are still well known today, such as IMDB ("one of the best examples of how easy and full-featured a World Wide Web database can be"), Webster's Dictionary, Yahoo (the property of Stanford University), and LOCIS (the Library of Congress search engine). Others are more arcane, like EINet Galaxy ("a crazy quilt of resources" which became one of the first manually populated search engines), the fan-run site the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5, and a learning tool for biology students called the Interactive Frog Dissection. MacUser magazine produced a second map of the Internet a year later, this time imagining it in the shape of four major continents surrounded by a "sea of resources". We can trace copies of this map, in a few variant forms, at the Smithsonian (no. 2017.3122.01, dated 1994), the Library of Congress (no. 2009-583474, dated 1995), and the David Rumsey Map Collection at Stanford (no. 12349.003, dated 1996). Original pictorial folding map (overall size: 63 x 95 cm; folded size: 22 x 10 cm), landscape-oriented, printed in colour on both sides. Pencil annotation on verso, bracketing descriptions of the Mac applications Anarchie, Eudora, and Fetch, and noting them as "popular shareware ftp applications". A few tiny nicks at extremities, in near-fine condition. Seller Inventory # 166451

Bibliographic Details

Title: MacUser Internet Road Map.
Publisher: New York: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1995