WHAT IS THE WEB?

Obviously this question does not propose that you answer by simply pointing at what you are looking at on your browser at this moment, because it assumes that, by now, you have already heard of and experienced the World-Wide Web. The question proposes to delve much deeper than its surface connotations.

What is the Web? Or, for that matter, what is a web? One possible answer is that it is a network of connected intentionalities. By "connected intentionalities" I mean that every web-page is held to somehow reflect the intentions of its author, and may be taken as an entity (though this entity has neither autonomy nor self-consciousness), and that it effectively points beyond itself by linking to other pages; other intentionalities.

We propose a philosophical inquiry into the nature of the World-Wide Web, and into the nature of cyberspace.
This amounts to the construction of a philosophy.
Any philosophy that is to be a complete philosophy embraces the following fields of inquiry:

Metaphysics (Theory of Existence)

Ontology (Theory of Being)

Epistemology (Theory of Knowledge)

Axiology (Theory of Value, encompassing ethics and aesthetics)