Mapping the Cloud
Ethan Zuckerman September 5,2009
Ars Electronica Linz, Austria

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

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

shells represent islands
curved and diagonal lines represent ocean swells
Captain Winkler, 1901

Mapping infrastructure

Map of telegraph connections
1891 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, 1992
From Martin Dodge’s “An Atlas of Cyberspaces”

Opte project
January 2005

“In Transit” from Cabspotting
Stamen 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 Sciences
using data from Flightstats.com

Daniel Cohen
“Imaginary Globalization”

the promise and the
of the cloud reality...

Infrastructure matters.

GAP map of Technorati influential bloggers. 8/31/09
Attention matters, too.

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

humans
flock
too
photo by James@NZ

photo by Dr. Zaro
the cloud invites us to image a borderless world...

in reality,
we tend to be
pretty parochial

photo by bass_nroll photo by metled_snowball
photo by droïd
the cloud can lure us into “imaginary cosmopolitanism”...
photo by rickz photo by xeni

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

photo bysubpop77
map who and what we know, what we pay attention to
photo by tracyshaun photo by inju

look at flow, as well as infrastructure

build bridges

resist homophily
photo by FortPhoto

the cloud is not a prediction
it’s a prophecy

thanks!
ethan@ethanzuckerman.com