Ethan Zuckerman
“Mapping Globalization”
Ethan’s post on his blog: Towards an Atlas of Globalization
Ethan’s blog: …My heart’s in Accra
[Note: * denotes best points. - Alex]
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talking about something Ethan doesn’t know much about
subtle themes: go see peabody museum of achaeology and ethnology
museum to museums: designed around 1900: what a museum looked like at turn of last century
eg. Pacific Island exhibit: from oceanographers in the Southern Pacific when they were there, with their notes, etc.
[image] “rebbelib,” stick chart, shell chart, Marshall Islands (~1900)
“mattang” — smaller, square charts, used to teach the principles of navigating by ocean swells
shells: represent islands, curved ribs: represent ocean swells coming off islands
very useful to represent coral islands in S. Pacific
only way to navigate: stick charts & songs
sing paddling songs to measure durations to go from one islands to another
stick chart: could follow interference patterns to the next island
rebbelib: represent island chain, w/ dominant ocean swells: know where you are in terms of islands & swells
Captain Winkler: only person from whom we know about these ‘maps’: wrote paper about these maps 1901
accuracy of these maps: incredible
current maps (eg. Google): suck –> “sorry, no information”: know more about these islands a hundred years ago
mapping infrastructure
these maps: not mapping island chain, but something that’s not geographically apparent: how island flows between these islands
more than simply ‘positional map’
Rand McNally Area and population of the world 1890 (mapping political geography)
turn of century: interesting maps to show infrastructure: international
eg., map of telegraph connections 1890
interesting: surrounding Africa with telegraph wires, we haven’t done that with fiberoptics yet
see colonizational patterns
can examine globalization way; back in 1800s
a lot of these maps of infrastructure: peak at turn of century, drop off after 1950s
current contemporary infrastructure: don’t really exist
railroad maps: can view all small towns along route: Sears/Roebuck magazines would go out to all these towns
19th century: connecting rural/urban, but mainly international infrastructure
shipping, telegraph, Suez Canal, transcontinental railway, refrigerated shipping, Chicago Mercantile Exchange (first standardized exchange)
on top of infrastructure: wave of globalization that outpaces the globalization we see today
wave of globalization: from historians: up to 1910: much faster than 21st century
global mobility
global migration: 1913 (10%), 2005 (2%)
mobile vs. immobile migration
steamship routes, canals, railroads, telegraph cables
embedded in these maps: financial markets, multinational corporations, migration
today:
maps: ship/airplane routes, oil/gas pipelines, telecommuncations cables, electrical grid
state of the art in mapping: from perspective of ‘internet user’
complete obsession with Google Maps: high quality satellite imagery, localized, zero cost
also: time shifted real-time representation
repercussions: what you can’t see on Google Maps: interesting: what you can’t see because government goes to satellite imagers and asks them to blur it out; also: what you can see as close as possible
Lagos, Nigeria: ~8,100,000 people
map: mainly clouded out
photos: taken by low-flying planes: expensive to do it multiple times
cloudless views: fairly expensive data
Nigeria: cheap, because not much demand for it
expectation of geographic maps: level of details that may brush up against privacy concerns
what do we expect from maps of infrastructure
ie., invasion of privacy: eg. “Bob” in Australia, passed out drunk on sidewalk
maps: that explain what the internet is about
visualizations: eg., “Atlas of Cyberspaces”
early 1990s: realistic to map internet in way that was comprehensive
net mapping: hit point of complete incoherence
eg., Opte project, January 2005
can you spider the net and find links/connections?
network mapping: dies off around 2004
Cheswick and Burche: private, cost-per-project personal projects
these maps: different from infrastructure maps in public domain from before
can do much better than maps in public domain, but have to buy from vendors (expensive)
eg., oil/gas pipelines: maps from Petroleum Economist, whose yearly subscription is in thousands of dollars
(ironic: sent issue after complaint on blog)
cryptome.org – eyeball-series.org: helpful and/or speculative maps
find maps of infrastructure: may be doing something criminal
Sean Gorman: getting degree in geography
research: wanted to take maps of internet (publicly accessible), wanted maps of fiberoptic cable; mashed up maps w/ maps of major corporations
found: if you wanted to sever areas of business, sever cables
Washington Post: article: saw him as security threat
key: no secret data!
putting two sets of data: so sensitive, found dissertation classified
security concern: people want maps of infrastructure so they can break it
Ethan’s concern: we only pay attention to infrastructure when it breaks
recent standoff of Russia/Ukraine over flow of natural gas
as stories start hitting news: maps available
infrastructure is invisible until it breaks
how does this color our understanding of infrastructure?
eg., in this situation: entire town goes down when one person fails
phrenology: Gall/Spurzheim chart (1997)
diagrams at beginning of 19th century:
2 things: right/revolutionary: 1) brain: center of thought, 2) differentiated organ (parts that have different functions distinguished from one another)
wrong: trying to apply the scientific method
at the time: very difficult to study brain function: dangerous, unless you examine deadly accidents
Phineas Gage: pole/rod through his head/brain (1848): after removal, kept living for 12 years
result: personality changed drastically
catastrophic failure: where we learned what we did about the brain –> lousy way to make a map
now: use PET scans
track marked oxygen or glucose to determine structures used during certain activities
mapping infrastructure by mapping the flow of oxygen or blood
* understanding globalization requires us to map FLOW as well as infrastructure
eg. understanding air travel
doesn’t tell you: difficulty to fly to X city during Y season
need map that tells you flow
visualization:
Zurich University of Applied Sciences, using data from Flightstats.com
clear: domestic travel concentrated in Asia, Brazil–>Portugal, barely any South America, South Africa flights, etc.
data from Flight Stats, global data of flight traffic –> visualization: not actually what happens, but what should happen
In Transit from Cabspotting, Stamen Design, using data from Yellow Cab
this one: built from real life data
reveal: different San Francisco than might intuit
normal street map: doesn’t pick out traces of avoiding traffic, or even: people going to the hospital (via cab)
also see: blank spots: can mean a park; are really: neighborhoods: where you have low chance of hailing cab (even w/ large number of people living there)
street map: shows you what’s possible
flow maps: shows you what happens
When does mapping flow become surveillance?
have to track people to map flow
(When you can use Google to put a pinpoint on my truck?)
difficulty: up close, individualization: looks like surveillance –> issue of privacy
certain maps that would help us understand world in terms of flow
major shipping lanes: easy to find, but not: where volume per container is going
eg., BBC News: tracked shipping container for one year
mapping one box, versus all of them
Can we intuit shipping routes from pirate attacks
Live Pirate Map, ICC/IMB 2008 (incidents of piracy, breaking into ships as reported to ICC)
piracy clusters: concentration in S. Middle East/E Africa
infrastructure maps: what could happen
flow maps: what does happen, how often
intent maps: what people actually want –> how do you map this?
eg., mapping Ester’s flow: don’t actually see her intent (going through Frankfurt to other places might be easier than through Munich)
infrastructure doesn’t always match flow
Burkina Fasa: getting ruined by infrastructure
years ago: connection to world: went through Abidjan
now: people going through Ghana & Benin (instead of Cote d’Ivoire, since it’s too dangerous)
flight patterns: Burkina: no connection to major national connection of Ghana
but flight companies: see flow & see opportunity to buy small aircraft & link Ghana to Burkina
Daniel Cohen: “Imaginary Globalization”
Fiji Water: actually comes to Fiji: 2nd largest brand of imported mineral water
in much less globalized world than we think we’re in: less mobile, reason we think we’re global: we encounter things that are global
encounter atoms from other countries, less so with people, less so with perspectives (?)
global stuff: blinds us to places where we’re not connected
global stuff: blinds us to how local our economies actually are
“Friedman Fallacy”
what else do we overestimate?
What would we learn from an atlas of connection?
not: “atlas of globalization”
Sean: already doing one: got PhD, big figure in open source GIS community: company:: FortiusOne
map maker: made with Geocommons maker (geocommons.com)
eg., Ethan made fishing imports versus exports map
flow map: could show where Chinese fish go, where Japanese fish imports are taken from
HealthMap.org
grabs public data (newsfeeds, health data), extracts geographic data: makes map: of where there are outbreaks of disease
drc.ushahidi.com
goal: invert who gets to make maps (not just cartographers) — “if you witness something, help us map it”: to map violence, eg., missile strikes in Gaza
interests:
identify and map the infrastructure we depend on
map flow as well as infrastructure (map: Electric Power Transmission, 1974. Congressional Research Service: power usage/production in United States)
map who and what we know, what we pay attention to
Ethan’s work: mapping media attention, interest: also to map relationships
what would an atlas of connection tell us about ourselves?
we learn about forms of information we don’t have today
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Q/A
- didn’t use word ‘network’ once
no reason, blindspot on how I’m analyzing this? suggestion: infrastructures that we don’t pay attention to, behaviors that take place over infrastructures that don’t show how infrastructures connect
social network mapping
infrastructure: may reflect barriers: language, culture, nation
- wishes for any data
what maps do: simplify
more valuable: in what they leave out than what they represent
eg., map of underseas cables: showing that W. Africa is connected to world by 1 cable, E. Africa not connected at all
opportunity: shows barriers & challenges
also: want to show what is overutilized & underutilized
- tools for making maps: good mash-up tools
professional mapping libraries: very expensive
OpenGeo system: full-screen country color maps: optimistic
tools: hard to approach right now
pent-up mapping desire
Google Maps: people found thousands of different ways to put pushpins in maps –> can do so much more than this
collaborative mapping: based on access to data, based on tools available
- why is there a gap between mapping infrastructure and flow
infrastructure has life-span, if built rationally at one moment in time: maybe not as useful at next moment in time
why the two don’t meet: we’re much less rational about how we think about things
skepticism about maps of infrastructure; increasingly: maps of infrastructure tell us a lot: tell us what flows were thought to be or should be
infrastructure: built in hopes that flow will develop
* interest: when infrastructure & flow diverge from each other
- any way to measure differences between infrastructure/flow maps to understand intent?
didn’t get to show: BBC: study of infrastructure of Britain: Britain from Above
eg., use taxi map: focus on “the city” (center financial district): as day progresses: main areas light up, then smaller streets light up: because too many taxis are out, have to use non-central streets –> can peel away layers to understand how the city works
certain aspects of flow will always have to do with infrastructure
* ultimately: mapping intent is hard: because people’s intent is shaped by infrastructure they have to use
flow: much closer to intent than to infrastructure
- how infrastructure maps will play out as told by an individual? certain characteristics of infrastructure that are independent of intent
terrible ways of mapping: sometimes you have to do it
entire map of net changes when countries restrict internet access
new map: where choke points are on the Net –> how traffic actually flows, around these barriers