Oh, so they have internet on computers now? — Homer Simpson

When William Ralston Balch set out to write the The Complete Compendium of Universal Knowledge in 1895 it was a mammoth undertaking that eventually led to a prototype for the first encyclopedias. Fast-forward to the 21st century, and you’ll find local artist Daniel Newman using Balch’s book as a spring board for his own book, WWW, only with it, he attempts, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, the impossible feat of chronicling all known internet phenomena within the span of 112 pages.

This irreverent art book lays out in encyclopedic form a variety of oddities and curiosities from the internet. It has everything from to interesting facts, tidbits of knowledge, funny stories, to out-right hoaxes and misinformation. And just like with the internet, it’s hard to tell the difference between fact and fiction, which had me constantly consulting the web to verify what’s written in the book, or to learn the source for certain entries.

With this book you’re forced to reconcile the fluid way in which information travels online with the static nature of print. The tactile experience versus the virtual experience. Something everyone is slowly coming to grips with nowadays as newspapers across the country continue to fold.

Information moves at a 1,000 mile per hour on the web, and a book like this can only hope to capture a blurry snapshot, but it’s an interesting and an unusual one at least. It’s no coincidence that the book is loaded with tons of images culled from the web, each zoomed in closely for just enough loss of resolution to give off a certain blurry spectral quality.

[NAME] Publications: namepublications.org/