Perhaps [dolphins] have spent millions of years building an Internet of open communication ... If they built an oceanwide web, it would have no archive but their collective brains and no search engines but their sonar ... Maybe the whole ocean is their auditory apparatus and archive; by joining their water-based inner ear with the outer ear of the ocean, perhaps they have a medium for being in time that resembles or recording media but contrasts with the apparent instantaneity of our oral communication. What is perhaps natural for them — nonlinear data access — is a matter of cultural techniques for us, and is only made possible by recording media.