iconic only for humans, who as underlined by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin depend on tangible referents for orientation. [9] According to William Gibson, cyberspace is a metaphorical expression for networked computing, governed by the so-called «matrix,» a Cartesian datascape. Essential for Cartesian grids is the fact that mnemotechnical images, common since antiquity, have been replaced by numbers on the vertical and horizontal axes. «Mapping» therefore should be taken in its mathematical, topological sense, in order not to confuse imaginary (iconic) with symbolic (indexical) operations in cybernetic aggregates and physical networks. «Any map could be a voyage in thought connecting a passage and a territory» (Christine Buci- Glucksmann) [LI], but this nice metaphor mistakes maps for what they cannot be—free floating. Only computing can actually perform trajectories in n-dimensional calculation. The really relevant maps have always been hidden, kept secret by the power agencies—like the source codes hidden behind cyber-spatial interface metaphors of ‹navigation.› Media-archaeologically seen, cyber‹space› is not about images, sounds or texts, but about bits;

thus the cartographic or mnemotechnical approach is misleading. Virtual mapping is a function of mathematical topology. Cyberspace is not a new place of memory, but the transformation of lieux de mémoire into nodes and nets. No longer bound to physical places, the virtual addresses exist in mathematical topologies only. [10]

Digital mapping

Digital mapping opens new horizons for search operations in the «Media Art Net»: mot just addressing and linking images and texts using alphabetical addresses, once again subjecting images and sound to words and external meta-data (the archival classification paradigm), but addressing digital images down to the single pixel from within, in their own medium, allowing for a random search (an apparent disorder as an alternative economy of information—generating the unexpected). Instead of just mapping data banks, computers can be used to make new types of maps that were previously impossible, such as scans of objects organized into networks based on their formal similarity. As long as