<p>Moving images used to be hostages to screens, both large (cinema) and small (television). But, the advent of broadband and the Internet has rendered visuals independent of specific hardware and, therefore, portable. One can watch video on a bewildering array of devices, wired and wireless, and then e-mail the images, embed them in blogs, megaupload and download them, store them online ("cloud computing") or offline, and, in general, use them as raw material in mashups or other creative endeavours.</p> <p>With the aid of set-top boxes such as TiVo’s, consumers are no longer dependent on schedules imposed by media companies (broadcasters and cable operators). Time shifting devices – starting with the humble VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) – have altered the equation: one can tape and watch programming later or simply download it from online repositories of content such as YouTube or Hulu when convenient and desirable.</p> <p>Inevitably, these technological transitions have altered the media experience by fragmenting the market for content. Every viewer now abides by his or her own idiosyncratic program schedule and narrowcasts to "friends" on massive social networks. Everyone is both a market for media and a distribution channel with the added value of his or her commentary, self-generated content, and hyperlinked references.</p> <p>Mutability cum portability inevitably lead to anarchy. To sort our way through this chaotic mayhem, we have hitherto resorted to search engines, directories, trusted guides, and the like. But, often these Web 1.0 tools fall far short of our needs and expectations. Built to data mine and sift through hierarchical databases, they fail miserably when confronted with multilayered, ever-shifting, chimerical networks of content-spewing multi-user interactions.</p> <p>The future is in mapping. Maps are the perfect metaphor for our technological age. It is time to discard previous metaphors: the filing cabinet or library (the WIMP GUI – Graphic User Interface – of the personal computer, which included windows, icons, menus, and a pointer) and the screen (the Internet browser).  Cell (mobile) phones will be instrumental in the ascendance of the map. By offering GPS and geolocation services, cellphones are fostering in their users geographical awareness. The leap from maps that refer to the user’s location in the real world to maps that relate to the user’s coordinates in cyberspace is small and unavoidable. Ultimately, the two will intermesh and overlap: users will derive data from the Internet and superimpose them on their physical environment in order to enhance their experience, or to obtain more and better information regarding objects and people in their surroundings.  The Maps of Cyberspace  "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…" At first sight, it appears to be a static, cluttered diagram with multicoloured, overlapping squares.</p> <p>Really, it is an extremely powerfulway of presenting the dynamics of the emerging e-publishing industry. R2 Consulting has constructed these eBook Industry Maps to "reflect the evolving business models among publishers, conversion houses, digital oximeter distribution companies, eBook vendors, online retailers, libraries, library vendors, authors, and many others. These maps are 3-dimensionaloffering viewers both a high-level orientation to the eBook landscape and an in-depth look at multiple eBook models and the partnerships thathave formed within each one." Pass your mouse over any of the squares and a virtual floodgate opens – a universe of interconnected and hyperlinked names, a detailed atlas of who does what to whom.  eBookMap.net is one example of a relatively novel approach to databases and web indexing. The metaphor of cyber-space comes alive in spatial, two and three dimensional map-like representations of the world of knowledge in Cybergeography’s online "Atlas". Instead of endless, static and bi-chromatic lists of links – Cybergeography catalogues visual, recombinant vistas with a stunning palette, internal dynamics and an intuitively conveyed sense of inter-relatedness.</p> <p>Hyperlinks are incorporated in the topography and topology of these almost-neural maps