The internet is, among other things, an elaborate exploitation of a feature of the computer. the computer merely translates human input (wether at the programming stage or end users mouse clicks) into rough approximations (digital, more precisely higher electricity burst, lower, and none at all) for easier storage and manipulation. the roughness or "resolution" has increased over time, yet the human eye is clearly capable of far more than 72 dpi. then translates the stream of on/offs back onto the screen.

The feature that allows networking, is the computer's versatility to obtain this flow of 1's and 0's from several input jacks. A couple of which can be directly or inderectly connected to phone lines, and ultimately other machines in a like manner.

This, is surely old news, most of you are well aware of. But this explanation illustrates that all information these networks (The Net) convey is merely an approximation, rounding off from the infinitely complex. Arguably, a mood such as "happiness" is an abstracted culmination of thousands of intricate moods. It is surely impossible to digitize happiness. (much less agree precisely what it is, or even if it exists as a physical entity).

Yet we can read a web page a laugh or be angered or excited.... though it seems impossible for emotional content to be transmitted from machine to machine, obviously that is the end effect. Though "traveling" in some mysterious way.

In transmitting information, the computers must agree on an arbitrary address from which information is coming or going. For the internet to function, this address must be unique for all connections. this address comes in the form "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx". Though most users never actually see these numbers, they are like licence plates identifying all traffic on the web, obtainable through a variety of means, in this case a Perl script.

These 4 sections can (arbitrarily) be split and used to define the two pairs of coordinates in the end points defining a line. Hence, multiple connections, all defining coordinates are fed to a database. There is a rarely used feature in Flash using ActionScript to draw lines, shapes, fills, etc.

Thus by reading the coordinates from the data base, the program draws a map of moods present at the given moment. Hence, the emotional information is (miraculously or ridiculously?) expressed in an entirely concrete form, one that computers can process.