The Shape of Alpha
Aaron Straup Cope Where 2.0 May 2009

Hi, my name is Aaron

“The problems they have with labeling and handling contested
categories is a problem with all categorization systems since the
world began. Metadata is worldview; sorting is a political act. [...]
would love to avoid those problems if they could – who needs
the tsouris? — but they canʼt. No one gets cataloging “right” in
any perfect sense, and no algorithm returns the “correct”
results. We know that, because we see it every day, in every
large-scale system we use. No set of labels or algorithms solves
anything once and for all; any working system for showing data
to the user is a bag of optimizations and tradeoffs that are a lot
worse than some Platonic ideal, but a lot better than nothing.”
Clay Shirky

Metadata is worldview

“Location versus place”

Reverse geocoding

Bounding boxes

Inappropriate touching

Whoʼs on first?

The reality

The “reality”

Synthetic telepathy

continent
country
region
county maybe
“metropolitan area”
locality and airports (and “hollywood”)
neighbourhood

North America 24865672
United States 23424977
California 2347563
San Francisco 12587707
“San Francisco Bay Area” “we suck”
San Francisco 2487956
The Mission 2452334

Buckets of points

Connect the dots?

Alpha shapes!

the
“mastro”
Bag of optimizations?

IF YOU LIVED HERE!!!
(Corrections)

Clustr

$> clustr -h
clustr 0.21 - construct polygons from tagged points
written by Schuyler Erle
(c) 2007-2009 Yahoo!, Inc.
code.flickr.com
Usage: clustr [-a <n>] [-p] [-v] <input> <output>
-h, -? this help message
-v be verbose (default: off)
-a <n> set alpha value (default: use \"optimal\" value)
-p output points to shapefile, instead of polygons

You are here

Donut holes

The absence and the anchor

No, really

No GIS data was harmed

api = Flickr.API(...)
req = Flickr.API.Request(method='flickr.places.getInfo', woe_id=3534)
res = api.execute_request(req)
SHAPES
xml = elementtree.ElementTree.parse(res)
shpfile = xml.find(“.//shapedata/url”)

mar23 -3.589138 37.176615
mar23 8.55027 47.410359
mar23 104.91085 11.565471
mar23 76.487388 12.860738
mar23 -122.413369 37.780475
mar23 8.55027 47.410359
mar23 8.55027 47.410359
mar23 -0.134603 51.510198
mar23 8.55027 47.410359
mar23 103.531723 10.601642
mar23 -0.878477 49.370609
mar23 -38.730154 -12.53831
POINTS
mar23 127.127265 37.534776
mar23 -2.231297 53.465333
mar23 5.312672 60.399144
mar23 -0.651283 38.060864
mar23 4.417362 51.89821
mar23 -38.730154 -12.53831
mar23 11.249792 43.781857
mar23 -3.589138 37.176615
mar23 -2.292194 53.463448
mar23 -73.984658 40.727205

clustr = wsclustr.ec2(access_key='...', secret_key='...')
clustr.startup(ami='ami-4d769124')
MAPS (FROM SCRATCH)
for a in (100, 10, 1, 0.1) :
shpfile = clustr.clustr('/path/to/points.txt', alpha=a)
clustr. shutdown()

mmmmm....data

/services/shapefiles/1.0
www.flickr.com

Psychosynthography

Naked Lunch City

“Constellations of connections”

“Becoming the territory”

Thank you

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/02/24/an-abundant-present/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3182764164/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbiddulph/2716828710/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/timo/sets/72057594109532582/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3377702505 YOU SHALL KNOW US BY OUR TOOLS
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/04/the-failure-of-amazonfail/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3180283176/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchwithcandy/2680466572/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3504862388/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickisconfused/3291840240/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3504929546/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jan/30/mobilephones-startups http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3505864039/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahnw/3086144646/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/auggie_tolosa/3025514778/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/_mia/3445220156/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajagendorf25/3457595954/
http://biogeo.berkeley.edu/gadm/ http://www.flickr.com/places/France/
http://blip.tv/file/969021/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3504858798/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbiddulph/416190643/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3442514097/
http://aaronland.info/talks/#where08 http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3444418523/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/angermann/3455505520/ http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/270-palestines-island-paradise-now-with-a-word-from-its-creator/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3133070488/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3204132340/
http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/teaching/projects97/belair/alpha.html http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.places.getInfo.html
http://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/08/08/location-keeping-it-real-on-the-streets-yo/ http://code.flickr.com/blog/2009/04/07/the-only-question-left-is/
http://www.slideshare.net/straup/the-interpretation-of-bias/33 http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2009/04/12/hammock/#py-wsclustr-php
http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3084890631/ http://www.mapsfromscratch.com/
http://code.flickr.com/svn/trunk/clustr/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3437832035/
http://www.flickr.com/places/US/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dianeperson/3356117774/
http://www.flickr.com/places/US/TX/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/nitelynx/44189973/
http://www.flickr.com/places/HKG/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3459117321/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/straup/3466918414/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogseats_bike/2999571556/
INSERT BAJA CANADA JOKE HERE http://www.flickr.com/photos/theincidental/3467181477/
http://magicalnihilism.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/the-map-becoming-the-territory/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/timo/2912270910/
http://www.aaronland.info/talks