24 Hours In Cyberspace
1996
Rick Smolan
Printed Matter
Media Archeology Lab
Que Macmillan Publishing
Label written by Nana Afriyie
The cover to the 1996 book, 24 Hours In Cyberspace, highlights the purpose of the book in its now retro-futuristic aesthetic. The subtitle present on the cover, “Painting On The Walls Of The Digital Cave,” is reminiscent of the Plato’s Cave allegory, honing in on the philosophical subtext that could be found within a person’s exploration of the relatively early internet as a virtual portrait of reality.
24 Hours In Cyberspace follows a single day on the internet, February 8, 1996, as photographer Rick Smolan, with the help of 150 top photojournalists and over 1,000 other photographers, editors, computer programmers, and interactive designers, selected photos that emphasized the ways people around the world used and were affected by the internet to be edited and displayed on the website cyber24.com. 200 photos of the total 200,000 taken in what was deemed the “largest one-day online event” make up the book, separated into chapters marking different aspects of the internet’s universality.
Image Citation:
- Media Archeology Lab, 24 Hours In Cyberspace, Creative Commons: Attribution, Non-Commercial.
Resources:
- “24 Hours in Cyberspace.” MAL. Accessed February 16, 2024. https://www.mediaarchaeologylab.com/collection/24-hours-in-cyberspace-36fd248.
- Wikipedia contributors. “24 Hours in Cyberspace.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed February 16, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=24_Hours_in_Cyberspace&oldid=1171339795.