I walk the maze of moments
Enya (1995), Anywhere Is
but everywhere I turn to
begins a new beginning
but never finds a finish
I walk to the horizon
and there I find another
it all seems so surprising
and then I find I know
Webrings — mutually interlinked rings of web sites — are a cultural phenomenon that represent the "virtual" agglomeration of a collection of practices that singularly are found in various social spaces and different cultural situations. The specific expression of these formations and their distinctive elements qualifies any similarities that can be identified between these observed phenomena and acts as a caution to the ad hoc conflation of cultural practices with particular cultural meanings or purpose. In this way, although this paper references Malinowski's ethnographic work in the Trobriands it does not seek to imply that webrings are, as the Kula is described, "...one of the most vital interests in life" (101) or that the tokens of exchange within the webring are of a significance that, as Benedict notes, "many men died because of them" (Benedict 114). However, both Malinowski's and Mauss's interpretations of the obligations and complexities of the gift provide a framework from which the contemporary phenomena of the webrings, and the tokens of human action which are commodified within, might be understood.
The Practice of the Webring
Webrings combine and require the simultaneous maintenance of, at least, two visible and directly associated sets of practices. The visibility of these practices, however, belies a wider collection of activities that are their precursors. Malinowski describes a similar complexity found with the Kula as, "the manifoldness of its component pursuits." (83). The webring as a cultural situation can be seen as the intersection of these practices and can be identified as the effect of reciprocal and market exchange practices being simultaneously applied. This interrelated combination of practices distinguishes the webring from the "conventional" model for social relations found on the web which singularly emphasises a maintainer's site and its relationship with an indefinite "otherness" that is embodied in the form of the undifferentiated and problematic "user". The webring moderates this relationship with the incorporation of dimensions of "likeness" through the presence of fellow ringmasters and ringmembers and in reflection of the affiliation generally associated with gift exchange. This social network has the effect of reducing, in varying degrees, the "otherness" of the "user" from complete anonymity by assuming, although perhaps overly so, a shared and common interest in the maintenance of these practices and of the ring. The user is consequently positioned within a hierarchical continuum of roles and identities rather than in an antithetical relationship as is constructed with "conventional" sites.
When Sage Weil and Troy Griffith, in 1995, first pieced together their code for constructing a webring they initiated, perhaps unwittingly, a system that commodifies social relations in cyberspace. The premise of their webring code is technically straightforward. Individual maintainers of Web pages can include their site into a ring of sites which share similar interests. The webring's sites are associated, through reciprocal hypertext links, in a, hopefully, unbroken circle to create a form of semiosis in the midst of the complex and apparently asemiotic Web. Weil's webring.org site emphasises the navigational advantages of this system over Internet search engines. Other versions of the webring concept, such as Looplink and the commercial webring server — Ringsurf, focus upon the marketing potential of the concept. However, few sites that host the various versions of webrings articulate any consideration for the social relationships that are being asserted in the presence, and influence, of these systems. Instead, each of these sites, in various ways, are locked into expositions of the technical benefits of their own system. Any consideration for the social is then reduced to being a consequence of the technological determinism expressed as an enthusiasm for their code.
Technology, in the form of facilitating pieces of code is not a necessary pre-requisite for the existence of webrings — it simply reduces the difficulty in creating and maintaining reciprocal linkages. This is evidenced by the lower-tech web "lines" which are created by manually interlinking additional sites on to either end of a line of hypertext links. These lines more readily acknowledge broader social associations as the premise for their hypertext linkages. The "Line around the WURLd" project is, for example, attempting to create one large interlinked line of sites based upon the strength of each website maintainer's pledge to do a "good deed". Another line seeks to link all families that are online. Weil and Griffith's code, rather than being significant for enabling the possibility of webrings, reveals the similarity of social relations and association found on the Web with those of other social spaces. These similarities indicate that the obligations associated with gift giving and of maintaining social reciprocity is a consequence of a wide collection of cultural conditions rather than a particular spatial provenance. The variety of webrings currently online also indicates the tenuous form of association that can legitimate this form of exchange within a webring. This variety and the great range in the number of ringmembers in individual sites provides the possibility for a taxonomic analysis which focusses upon the form of relationship which defines the ring rather than by its overarching topic. Scanning the descriptions found in the Ringworld, however, reveals other distinctions which may explain otherwise inexplicable differences that exist between rings of similar topics. Possible taxonomic relations range from sites which connect a specific role or identity with a particular geographic place, to "fan" pages, to particular cultural association. In addition to these general types, the webring has produced another peculiar set of associations. An identifiable group of rings adopt a self-referential model by bringing together pages intended primarily to be part of the webring. Through various methods, rings such as "About Me", "Mad Cow", "Anyone can join this Webring" and "Totally Cool Web pages" appear to primarily draw their cultural references from the web. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth considering that each of these "types" of webrings, and the differing criteria for membership in each ring, may also indicate differences in the meanings and extent of the obligation represented in the gift received and the gift given.
Webrings are particularly social 'things'. The creation and maintenance of each ring, of which there are currently over 15,000, requires the co-operative efforts of many people who are usefully separated by physical distance. Although many webrings do incorporate physical proximity as a definitional criterion for membership, of which the "Fem Domaination in Florida" ring is one example. The concepts that underly the webring are, however, neither unique or recent social phenomena. By formalising, commodifying and, potentially ritualising, the exchange that occurs between maintainers the webring creates an economy of the Web in which the tokens for exchange are the abstract and transitory "hits" of visitors. Within the webrings these tokens are not directly representations, or substitutes, for money. However, the complexities of these forms of gift exchange are obscured when they are conducted within cultures where market exchange predominates and defines all forms of exchange. This complexity also distinguishes webrings from sites which carry conventional advertising where every "hit" on a virtual billboard is redeemable for a fraction of a cent. The "hits" of the webrings constitute a gift between the maintainers of each site with the ongoing and reciprocal obligations that this implies. Mauss's observations of Maori customs of reciprocation are not dissimilar, as is evidenced in his claim that "...it is clear that in Maori custom this bond created by things is in fact a bond between persons, since the thing itself is a person or pertains to a person." (10). The maintenance of reciprocal and ongoing links that is required, between web sites, to receive the gift of "hits" also defines the success, or otherwise, of the complete ring. Simply maintaining a site may not even suffice to remain within a ring; a continual reassessment of quality may also play a role, as one ringmaster related, "if it is not run well or if it has frequent changes I would dump it....as I have on a couple of occasions....I have little or no time for rings that are run badly." (pers corr). An individual site within a ring, then, is heavily reliant upon the support of its "neighbouring" sites. This relationship can vary and supports Mauss's claim that bound up in the obligations to both receive and give gifts is a tension which falls somewhere between friendship and warfare. This is found to lesser extremes in contrasting ringmaster's comments. In describing the benefits of the ring one ringmaster claims that: "Being as web rings generally focus on a common thread of interest, it's as if 'we're all in this together.'" However, this contrasts with the observation that, "I doubt there is any...[benefit] at all...except to do a service to the interested surfer to reach the next site of kind.....in fact many times it does a dis-service in that most of the time they never know there is much more to my whole site than just a topic that houses the ring itself.". This latter observation also hints at the existence of a particular navigation of the webring — a practice akin to the disinterested movements of what Urry described as the "postmodern tourist", for whom travel is undertaken for the sake of travel and to enable the returned tourist to exclaim, "Been there". This may also describe the more generic practice of web "surfing". Despite this being disparaged, there are webrings that openly sponsor it. The Web Tower provides a "third" dimension to the webrings. Using the analogy of an urban skyscraper it is possible to travel to different floors of the tower using a range of elevators. Each floor contains a link to a series of webrings. These rings are the floors of the tower. The relationship from one floor to the next can be anything from the occasionally tenuous to the more usually implausible.
Argonauts and Hits
The "hit" is the token of exchange within the webring and the Web at large. In its most unproblematic form as a token of market exchange the "hit" is supplied by the user for a duplication of the maintainer's web page. This is the basis of exchange for "value added" sites on the Web, such as commercial news services and pornography collections, and echoes familiar strategies for capitalist accumulation. Users at these sites are not bound into a system of reciprocation or obligation. The relationship is a temporary one pulled uncertainly from the aether and as rapidly returned. Within the confines of the webring, in contrast, a hit can only be passed if the neighbouring site maintains both the link and the page that forms part of the ring. An absent neighbouring page minimises the chances of receiving "hits" from within the system of webring exchange. Weil and the webring code attempt to minimise the possibilities for breaks in the chain of websites by allowing "hits" to be distributed sequentially from site to site, by random selection or by skipping over five sites at a time. However, and despite these efforts, if one of the destination sites in the chain chooses not to include any links back to the webring.org server the chain is broken, although not irreparably so. Other systems of similar reciprocal exchange which do not have a mediating central site negotiating each movement through the ring or down the line, such as the Web Tower, suffer more dramatically from broken links. The addition of these participants introduces the obligation, for the ringmembers but not the visitor, of a gift given between neighbours. This produces a more complex, and arguably more meaning-laden, existence for the hit by providing it with a history and a future — albeit unknown in detail but existent in theory.
"Hits", however, cannot traverse the web independent of human action as tokens of exchange. Describing "hits" as the tokens of exchange in the economy of the webring, perhaps, too readily reduces the varying relationships that "hits" are seen to hold from the differing subjective perspectives in this network of association. However, within the webring, "hits" are not solely imparted by the visitor's appearance at a site — as they are in the wider economy of web exchange. "Hits" within the webring are constituted through the relationship of both the visitors movement through the ring and the presence of a previous web site within the ring from which the current "hit" is launched. However, as a generic token of exchange, it may be difficult for the maintainer of a site to actually distinguish the "hit" that has passed through the webring from one formed outside this network of exchange. This prompts some ringmembers to group all their ring links on a single page or even dedicate a single page to each ring that their site is affiliated. As an anonymous token of market exchange the hit is collected at a site by incrementing a "hit" counter; the "hit" has the broad significance of money by being a detached token of exchange between the maintainer's site and the visitor. Taking this practice as the primary focus of the ring overly emphasises the consumption of the "hit" over the manner in which it is produced and obscures the significance of the webring over the "conventional" exchange of web. Similarly, the receipt of a "hit" at one site is not a completed transaction. The obligations of the "hit" as a gift makes the encouragement of onward movement of the same "hit" an equally important element of the page. The hit is not halved in apparent value or meaning by being passed onward, nor, however, is the hit itself directly enhanced by being present at previous sites in the ring.
In this capacity, the "hit", is only an indicative proxy for the presence of human agency and, by implication, the person traversing the ring themselves. These are the argonauts of cyberspace and their role in the ring is as essential as that of the ringmembers. The argonaut facilitates the exchange of one "hit" for one web page and conveys the gift of hits between sites. The direct relationship of the hit to the person moving through the ring clearly commodifies human action, in the form of the argonaut, as an element of the gift exchanged among ringmembers. However, as the commodified aspect of the gift exchange between ringmembers and the necessary conveyor of the representative tokens of their visit, the argonauts relationship to each of these points in the ring is not simply one of market exchange. The argonaut and "native" require each others presence and action to activate, maintain and legitimate the ring. The argonaut holds the potential to provide a hit but this can only be realised with the presence of the native's web page and the formalised ring to proceed around. The obligations for gift giving between ringmembers requires a gift like presentation to the argonaut by the ringmember in the form of a page. However, where exchange between the ringmembers is conducted between known and differentiated exchange partners the ringmembers relationship with the argonaut is generic, being only defined by their current respective identities. This relationship then lacks the direct obligations found between individual exchange partners and has the appearance, at least, of the processes of market exchange.
Argonauts, Ringmembers and Communities
One of the features of the webring, that distinguishes it from the Web in general, is the specific affiliation that reciprocally connects each site to one another and each argonaut with those pages and their maintainers. It is hard to believe, considering the basis for some of these affiliations, that any but the most devoted would persue the entire "Notepad" webring — a ring dedicated to pages edited exclusively with a text editor, or the "Enforcing God's Word" ring which despite currently containing only 7 sites exclaims:
Join a fast growing webring that is taking over the Web world! Where two or more Christians are gatherd [sic], there the Lord will be! Come JOIN a group that is Enforcing God's Word!
http://www.webring.ord/ringworld/soc/date.html
Given the particular focus of some rings also leads to the speculation that successfully traversing a ring in its entirety may constitute a rite of passage within some of these ring cultures. This possibility for a returned journey and a sense of closure is not possible in the Web as a whole. Navigating from the results of a search engine always leaves a, not unrealistic, sense that other sites remain as yet unvisited. By quantifying and formalising the scale of a webring, at a specific moment, a finite and acheivable pathway is defined for the potential argonaut.
These affiliations leads to the claim by ringmembers that their rings constitute communities. A number of difficulties appear to make this a tenuous claim. As Ruth Benedict indicated in her discussion of the Dobuan participants in the Kula, the existence of formal and reciprocal exchange practices between groups does not imply their membership within a community. In the case of the Kula, reciprocal exchange sustains extra-communal relationships through the obligations of gifts rather than integrating a community. The belief in the presence of a community between ringmembers is a readily sustainable one as it runs parallel to gift exchange with neither directly reliant on the other to persist. The sense of community may provide some further incentive to maintain a role within the ring but similarly a failure to sense a community within the ring does not directly disenfranchise a maintainer's site from the ring. Reliance upon a formation of community to sustain a webring, were this to occur, would be a fraught construction. The Web, or webrings, do not constitute a society separately nor is the culture of the web conveniently disentangled from the influences of 'real life' (increasingly, it should be noted, the obverse is also true).
Conclusion
As a brief conclusion and given the title of this paper I will defer to the ethnographic authority of Malinowski with a passage from the chapter, The Meaning of the Kula. Its relevance to my topic today I will leave for debate and discussion.
"Another unusual feature is the character of the transaction itself, which is the proper substance of the Kula. A half-commerical, half ceremonial exchange, it is carried out for its own sake, in fulfilment of a deep desire to possess. But here again, it is not ordinary possession, but a special type, in which a man owns for a short time, and in alternating manner, individual specimens of two classes of objects. Though the ownership is incomplete in point of permanency, it is in turn enhanced in point of numbers successively possessed, and may be called a cumulative possession. (510)"
Malinowski, The Meaning of the Kula