PING: The visualization of the Internet Imagine a self-generated movie: virtual camera devices called Eye Agents flying through net-space -- pulled by gravitaional fields surrounding the mass of data-object distribution. Through hyperlinking objects in a WWW map, the 4D virtual datascape unfolds its dynamics. Firstly, a WWW interface allows the user to explore the datascape and to contribute to and position their object on an interactive map. The Ping datascape is generated by this remote interaction. It is composed of all netwide distributed map elements; movie, geometry, and still image. The flying eye agent sees the datascapes' geometric representations of these netwide distributed map elements, and produces broadcast quality flight path output. Ping was originally intended as a visual flight through the Internet in the midnight hours between when TV went off the air at night, and back on the air in the morning. The TV is capable of carrying great volumes of visual information, while incapable of interactivity due to being a broadcast medium. The Internet is almost the opposite: You navigate actively through the information structure, but lack of bandwidth makes it hard to communicate visually. In combining the fast, visual broadcast ability of the TV and the interactive on-line presence of the global computer networks, a datascape is created, that you can actively influence via the network and view via the television. In an on-line, live setting, the two media grow together to become an interactive realtime medium. The Internet is a world wide medium merging science, entertainment, arts, politics and other disciplines. The goal of Ping is to make this structure visible and to create a crossculture-communication basis.