The philosopher, the butterfly, and the cache

Everyone knows that Google keeps a cache of the internet; if you think it through, it’s obvious that this means there are at least two internets — the one where all the sites actually are, and the copy of everything in Google’s cache. Perhaps there are three or four, if you count Yahoo, Baidu, and others. So which is the real internet, and which is the copy? Obviously, I would like to believe that the page I am writing on now is the real one. But would it be on the internet at all if it weren’t copied into some search engine’s cache? Since that copy is what searchers are looking for, it’s at least as true that the Google version of my site is the real one, and this is just a colony, supplying raw material to the metropolis. Thinking of the real internet as the one that resides inside Google’s closed network is an interesting and salutary discipline.