I attended the Steve Mentz talk in the Digital Humanities Center this past week. One point of conversation I found particularly interesting during this discussion was about the use of language when it comes to the internet. For instance, “surfing” the internet. “Flow” of data. I had never thought about how those words interact with technology and the idea of impermanence that comes with that language. The idea of surfing the internet makes it seem like we are just passing by, and the water (data) we touch will float away, with us leaving no trace of our existence. But, like the ocean, we are leaving a trace, something permanent rubbed into the surface that will sink to the bottom (think of the trash scattered on the ocean floor, invisible to the naked eye but long lasting evidence). Although I reckon impossible, I wonder how changing these terms might change our ideas on data and perhaps open our eyes to how insecure and public all of this data is. Perhaps if we used “walking the internet”, or “stomping through”. With these terracentric terms, we start to think about footprints (take digital footprint), and how those stick. I personally have literally no clue how these underground cables work or the cloud, but they kept getting mentioned during this talk (and the one during our class), and I’m wondering how they can even manage to support the amount of data we are constantly sending back and forth across the globe?