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Like generations of mapmakers before them,
today’s cartographers are tracing the outlines of new coasts,
making maps of new worlds, and changing our perception of
place. Unlike the geographers of previous centuries, however,
cyber-geographers are now mapping virtual space – a new
territory that we are rushing to inhabit as surely as our
ancestors settled the physical world.
A cyber-geographer and PhD student in the
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College
London, and a participant in the Centre’s cyber-geography
research initiative, Martin Dodge maintains the Cyber-Geography
Research web site and Atlas of Cyberspaces, a
web page that is rich with examples of this new discipline.
Cybermaps, the site explains, “help us visualise and comprehend
the new digital landscapes beyond our computer screen, in
the wires of the global communications networks and vast
online information resources… like maps of the real-world,
[they] help us navigate the new information landscapes,
as well being objects of aesthetic interest. They have been
created by 'cyber-explorers' of many different disciplines,
and from all corners of the world.”
Like other atlases, the electronic Atlas
of Cyberspace incorporates many perspectives. Some of
the maps in the Atlas are based on real-world cartography.
Others are much more abstract, and describe the structure
and information content of the new online virtual world.
The Atlas includes historical maps
that show the early imaginings of network pioneers and record
the evolution of ARPANET – the precursor of today’s Internet.
The first ARPANET node was installed in 1969, and 52 computers
were connected to the network within the first four years.
It grew exponentially after that. Dozens of more recent
maps in the Atlas show the physical extent of today’s
burgeoning global communications network, its logical interconnections
and information content.
Maps of the physical Internet in the Atlas
show the geographic location of switches, the topology of
network linkages and traffic flows. They show the placement
of submarine cables, the position of communications satellites
and the routes of Internet backbones. Three-dimensional
maps of the Earth show a globe that is enveloped in connectivity,
with links bridging cities and continents, so dense as to
be uncountable – maps that help us to visualize the true
extent of today’s wired world.
Maps of the logical network show the topology
of the hyperlinks between web sites, identifying the spokes
that link them to each other and the hubs through which
they interconnect. The majority of the connections, it turns
out, are made through a relatively small number of Internet
portals. From these maps, it is much clearer who owns the
prime real estate on the web.
New mapping techniques, which still seem
strange and unfamiliar to most people, apply virtual reality
and visualization tools to represent information as objects
floating freely in space. The collection of information
objects, more than anything else, seems like the stars and
planets in the universe. Web sites that are most closely
related in content hover in close proximity to each other
while others having much less in common are separated by
vast distances in space. Users can navigate through this
scene on a computer screen, able to see the online universe
as a whole or to zoom in on areas of interest.
More than ever this world resembles the
one described by William Gibson, who coined the word ‘cyberspace’
in the science fiction book Neuromancer, published
in 1984. It is, he said, “A consensual hallucination experienced
daily by billions... A graphical representation of data
abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human
system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in
the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of
data.”
Such is the stuff of cyber-geography – the
interplay of physical and virtual worlds, the very essence
of our new economy, new society. Like geographers of old,
today’s cartographers might be wise to add a warning around
the edges of the map (‘here be dragons’) lest we assume
that the territory is fully known.
Together with others, the Cyber-Geography
Research group at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
has begun to describe and document this world. In addition
to the Atlas of Cyberspaces, the Cyber-Geography
Research site provides a Geography of Cyberspace
Directory that is rich with resources for those who
seek to understand the depth and breadth of the global network.
Updated monthly, the Directory supplies links to
other web locations providing current information on the
growth of the Internet, its geographic distribution and
use. The group also publishes a monthly Cyber-Geography
E-mail Bulletin, which is distributed free to registered
readers. Three years of back issues are available on its
Internet site.
RESOURCES:
Cyber-Geography Research,
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis,
University College London –
http://www.cybergeography.org
Atlas of Cyberspaces –
http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html
Geography of Cyberspace
Directory –
http://www.cybergeography.org/geography_of_cyberspace.html
Cyber-Geography E-mail
Bulletin (subscribe) –
http://www.cybergeography.org/register.html
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