Johnston (2009) alludes to the metaphor of ‘Internet as a physical place’ and quotes Wellman and Gulia (1999) who positively view the impact of the internet as ‘… as if most North Americans lived in the heart of densely–populated, heterogeneous, physically–safe, big cities rather than in peripheral, low–density, homogeneous suburbs.’ Hand (2009) also describes apparent ‘promises’ of the digital urban landscape as a blend of new technologies and the Greek Polis. However, he also outlines the perceived threats of segmentation, surveillance and de-democratisation. Bell (2001) tells the story of the cyberpunk genre, in which the virtual world is described variously as ‘data stacked like a neon city’ (Gibson 1988 quoted in Bell 2001); a ‘digitised parallel world…in which no one can get the bird’s eye view of the plan, but everyone effectively has to operate at street level in a world which is rapidly being re-structured and re-configured’ (Burrows 1997 quoted in Bell 2001); and which Bell himself describes as a ‘datascape…populated by console cowboys’ uploaded consciousnesses, avatars, artificial intelligences, personality constructs – unthinkable complexity at ‘street’ level. with gangs forming around ‘technophilic’ identities’. (Bell 2001) In addition, Massive Attack’s video for Splitting the Atom travelled around a futuristic city reminiscent of many sci-fi movies such as Matrix.

This focus on the ‘city’ may suggest there is disconnect between the digital/virtual world and the countryside. It would probably be too blunt to immediately invert the various descriptors, metaphor and stories above to suggest that the rural world is undemocratic, data poor, parochial and static. However, it could be argued the urban representations fracture the privilege of the organic-ness of rural life – the meat – or to put it in other words, the human.