Mapping the Cloud

Ethan ZuckermanArs Electronica

September 5,2009Linz, Austria

“rebbelib”, “stick chart” or “shell chart”Marshall Islands, circa 1900

“mattang” - smaller, square chartsused to teach the principles of navigating by ocean swells

shells represent islandscurved and diagonal lines represent ocean swells

Captain Winkler, 1901

Mapping infrastructure

Map of telegraph connections1891 Stielers Hand-Atlas, Plate No. 5

Steamship routes, American Express Company, circa 1900

detail from Rand, Mc.Nally & Co's official railroad map of the United States with portions of the Dominion of Canada, the Republic of Mexico, and the West Indies, circa 1893

Donna Cox, Robert Patterson, NSFNET, 1992From Martin Dodge’s “An Atlas of Cyberspaces”

Opte projectJanuary 2005

“In Transit” from CabspottingStamen Design, using data from Yellow Cab

infrastructure maps: what could happen

flow maps: what does happen

Maps of infrastructure show us what’s possible.

Maps of flow show us what actually happens.

by Zurich University of Applied Sciencesusing data from Flightstats.com

Daniel Cohen“Imaginary Globalization”

the promise of the cloud

and thereality...

Infrastructure matters.

Attention matters, too.

GAP map of Technorati influential bloggers. 8/31/09

- How many of these pages are written by Americans?- By English speakers?- By people from a verydifferent socio-economic strata?- By people who strongly disagreewith me on an ideological issue?

photo by James@NZ

humansflocktoo

photo by Dr. Zaro

the cloud invites us to image a borderless world...

in reality,we tend to be

pretty parochial

the cloud can lure us into “imaginary cosmopolitanism”...

photo by bass_nroll

photo by droïd

photo by rickz

photo by metled_snowball

photo by xeni

...but it also gives us the tools to shrink the world

map who and what we know, what we pay attention to

photo by tracyshaun photo by inju

photo bysubpop77

look at flow, as well as infrastructure

build bridges

photo by FortPhoto

resist homophily

the cloud is not a predictionit’s a prophecy

thanks!

ethan@ethanzuckerman.com