Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

This is how history begins: with a log of every address online in 1992. 130 was the sum we had by 1993, by which time the countingrooms we were monitoring had projected the sum as like quarterly doubling. 623, approx 4.6 % of which were dotcom. 2738, approx 13.5 %. There were too many urls to keep track of, so we kept track of sites. There were too many sites to keep track of, so we kept track of host domains that only monitored or made public their numbers of registered sites, not their numbers of sites actually setup and actually functional, and certainly not their names or the urls, the universal resource locators of their individual pages, but what frustrated more than the fact that we could not dbase all the web by ourselves was the fact that none of the models we engineered could ever predict its expansion.

Computers had grown smaller by the release, shrinking to lapsize, and were shrinkable further until the limit, the entropy point, at which it became feasible to make a computer handsize, fingersize, too small to be humanly usable. The web had reached something of the same limitpoint but from the opposite direction, it had become too big for any one user to feasibly navigate. We identified only two ways to bring about realignment. Either to limit its size, which was censorship, or to map it and make that map searchable. The future was and will always be ahead of us, but also behind us, and to the sides. The future is the client, the past is just something to find.

The wallpaper of the condo was testpattern CMYK, cyan magenta yellow key black stripes curving shoddy toward their tangency at a monoxide detector whining the sinewave of its battery drained. We covered it all with lists printed on printers and legal pads, lists of sites and sitemaps described, but it was only with the phoneline conked and the electricity just after that we were finally able to get to work. Before we were too close to the screen. Too near to the potentials to equate them.

It was harrowing just going outside. The other condo units shone dusk to dawn and phones rang in the sky. We had octalfortied that sound and the look of gravel and hedges. At the foot of the stairs our mailbox had lacked the bandwidth for all the bills from PG&E and PacBell, four figures of bankruptcy. The condo was accessed by a staircase as like a fire escape, and the storage enclosure under the stairs contained a cage, and the cage contained a putrefied pet skeleton. It might have been a hedgehog. We went back inside. Just swiveled. It had taken a year and a half, 1993, for us to realize that the chair we sat in was adjustable. Which was helpful because either the desk was too low or we were taller than D-Unit.

Or else it was AOL that finally cut us off. Because that too was billed separately. We cannot recall precisely. And we had no clue that D-Unit owned a hedgehog.

Point is, we were returned from practice to theory and paper. It is unfortunate that you will have to transcribe this.

[SARI CONTACT?]

[CONDO MGMT?]

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Tetration’s genesisThe Clinger’s, Abs’s condo complex at 100 Muralla Way, Pacifica, CA, consisted of 26 identical units, all of them two bedroom condos below second floor one bedroom condos, with the exception of Cohen’s, which was a second floor one bedroom condo above the maintenance shed.

Visitors had to navigate ruptured mulchbags, rusting rakes, shovels, and a wheelbarrow to access the outdoors staircase, which [suspiciously] resembled a fire escape. But if visitors were infrequent with Abs alive, with his son in residence they

Only once a month, from July 1993 through July 1995 , just after Cohen had completed each month’s second update of his site, diatessaron.stanford.edu, and clicked Send on the month’s second email — addressed to 92 recipients (01/94), addressed to 736 recipients (12/94) — would a rental minivan show up, and two men — still boyish—would hazard the stairs, and knock at the door.

Summer 1993 was a decisive time for both de Groeve and O’Quinn. They had [been] graduated from Stanford, offers were on the table from Microsoft, graduate school beckoned, and

Diatessaron, hosted at[?]/by[?] the Stanford domain due to the entreaties of recent graduates de Groeve and O’Quinn, was a site comprised of two pages [EXPLAIN THE DIATESSARON NAME]. One listed [≥400 ≤600] sites ordered by main url alphabetically within category. The other listed [≥400 ≤600] the same sites ordered by domain or host alphabetically within category. All listings were suburled, meaning that each site’s pages were listed individually, until that policy had to be abandoned for practical considerations [REMINDER OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH OF ONLINE], summer 1994.

Its categories remained fairly consistent throughout: Tech, Math, Science, and the omnivorous Arts & Culture & Oriental Culture & Recreation/Miscellaneous/Food & Drink/Gaming, each of which contained White Pages (personal sites), Yellow Pages (business sites), Blue (governmental), Red (academic), the colors being the highlighting around the links and so the governmental and even the academic were unreadable.

Access to [the] Diatessaron was free — it was not equipped to process payments online — neither was there a fee for the [daily? weekly?] email, which was a hyperlinkdump of all the sites that’d appeared since the previous email, both alphabetized and crossclassified by url within host/domain. Admission to this elist, however, required each prospective recipient to file at least eight unique site identifications and descriptions, while to remain on the elist required filing a further two IDs and Descris if not uniquely then [biweekly? bimonthly?]. The updating, and the compiling of the email, were funded by subscriptions to a print directory, published [irregularly], which didn’t just reproduce the site in intransitive hardcopy, but synthesized it too. This was “The Rainbow Pages” (O’Quinn). Or “The Online Phonebook” (de Groeve). It contained both halves of an updated Diatessaron, but unlike the site it interpolated the emails by bolding, or italicizing, or underlining, depending on who was doing the wordprocessing/design — de Groeve favoring bold, O’Quinn favoring italics, Cohen the underliner — all the urls that’d appeared since the previous edition.

All this for just $12, postage not included, or a 12 volume subscription, postage included (domestic only), for $100.

But then why pay for something available for nothing online?

Because of the incentives—“Why pay for something available for nothing online?” was a note Cohen wrote for the original edition, and his question was answered by the features that followed: coprographic site correspondence reprinted under the rubric “Dear Admin,” the swift merciless judgments of “Editorz Pickz ’N’ Prickz,” which de Groeve and O’Quinn issued under the collaborative cybernym “Dr. Oobleck Tourette OB/GYN,” a centerfold with interview column called “Femailer Daemon,” and the regular but vague and so never fulfilled promise fonted above each page in Helvetica: “all members get h&jobs.”

The backcover, initially, was an ad for The Clinger’s — whose management had not requested it and had no site to publicize and rejected a proposed trade for rent reduction — and folded behind it was a subscription envelope preaddressed but not prestamped to a PO box in Pacifica. Checks were accepted, but not creditcards: “If sending ca$h please fold discretely ” [sic or not?]. [“Being in business meant reordering our lives: the file could be sent to the printer, but not via email [[then how?]]. The proofs had to be approved, and even that could only be accomplished in person. On distro days whoever rented the minivan, drove it, or so ‘Cull’ and ‘Qui’ insisted after they had an accident when whoever was not registered was driving[[?]]. We had to be at the printer in Oakland by 08:00, in order to load up the books — in our prime we were selling just over 2000 copies per volume — to get to Bay Stationery by 10:30, in order to pick up the packaging, to get to our unit by 11:00 or so to print out the labels and pack the books, to get to the Pacifica PO by 13:00, when it was relatively empty just after lunch. At the PO we would check the box, collect the checks and cash, stop at the Wells Fargo to deposit it all, and if we still had time stop for agave shakes and mock duck pockets at Bigestion. We had to be dropped off at our unit by 16:00 at the latest if our partners were to regas the van and have it back in its lot by 16:30 to avoid the night fee. ‘Qui’ and ‘Cull’ would then bicycle home. They were still living across from the The Irish Phoenix on Valencia.”]