The Marketleap Report
Volume II, Issue #7, Sector 9, April 3rd, 2002

Tracing the Web Across America
By Keith Boswell

The road waited patiently as we finished loading the truck. The prospect of driving a moving truck, car in tow, over two thousand miles in a just a few days lay before us like some Herculean task given to mortals. My mind raced with the thoughts of the sights and sounds we might encounter.

I remembered when I had moved from Texas to Oregon driving past the "Devil's Mart" in a remote area of Oklahoma, a barren cinder block store with no windows and a giant devils head on the side. I felt they had adequately warned us that we might be sacrificed if we chose to shop there. My anticipation to encounter those unique "road" moments was strong.

I also had a personal goal while traveling this time: to see how the Internet would be represented as we trekked through nine different states across the northern US. Seattle had been home for over three years. Being there, you felt plugged in, connected, as if the Internet was being distributed around freely like oxygen.

I didn't know what to expect from the Midwest and wondered if I would find the same sense of connectivity that I had felt in Seattle. Pulling out of Seattle, the dim glow of the web and all of its intricacies fell into the background as the highways pulled us in and led us to our new home.

It wasn't until we reached Missoula, Montana that we saw our first billboard with a web address - www.lewisandclark200.com. Eastern Washington and Idaho hadn't shown us anything new online. I felt an immediate connection to those explorers who had braved so many challenges to explore and document our nation. The site was a comprehensive resource documenting Lewis and Clark's trek, updated for today to show the attractions and businesses that now scattered their legendary trail.

And then darkness. A great void until NPR crawled through some static and mountain passes to deliver us a great radio show about the history of rhythm and blues. And they had a web address - www.rhythm-n-blues.org. The soul of the road swelled with the sounds of legends like James Brown, Etta James, and Curtis Mayfield.

We ended up staying in Billings, Montana that night. We had basic dialup access from our hotel and we were happy to connect and check mail. When we awoke in the morning, we noticed that a hotel adjacent to ours was advertising "High-Speed DSL from every room". Why hadn't we stayed there? What had happened in the black of night that we had missed this beacon of broadband? As if surfing on a high-speed connection at midnight was what would cure the aches of the stationary positions we had assumed during the days drive.

But the time to ponder that query wasn't long as we resumed our push to reach our final destination. As the morning drive turned into day and then night, we were disappointed to lose any connection to the web throughout the rest of Montana and all of North Dakota. That night, we pulled into St. Cloud, Minnesota and realized we had experienced a full day with no reference to the web at all. We had seen all the personalized license plates you could imagine, something I viewed as a form of individual marketing. Good thing we were almost there.

As the morning drive resumed, this time in a flurry of snow and rain, the web began to emerge again. As we neared Minneapolis, we began to see an increasing number of billboards that contained web addresses like www.bestcountryaround.com and www.greatfaithnow.com. My mind raced with the different sections of the websites that I imagined that I might find.

Somewhere in Wisconsin, we passed an RV with a web address that had been carefully placed on the side - www.yourinnervoice.com. The driver appeared as normal as everyone else on the road, but he had clearly marked his territory online. I envisioned him traversing the country with a wireless connection, conducting business from his RV as he explored the open road.

As we continued through cities like Madison, Chicago, Gary, and Grand Rapids, I realized that the web was deeply ingrained in the psyche of America. Now that we had emerged from the remote parts of the country, all around us were billboards and radio ads touting websites of every slant and style.

Who could have imagined the romance we might find with something as simple as an infrastructure made up of pavement and wires? Americans cherish the web as much as we cherish the way highways allow us to move around the country. They both represent mobility, freedom, and the promise of new frontiers to explore.

keith@marketleap.com.