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

When I was younger, I liked to brag a lot, until one day I realized I was gradually turning into “that kid,” which propelled me into a slow process of self-exoneration and forced-realization of the humble. But I’ll take a moment to plug two upcoming talks that I’m hosting at Connecticon in Hartford, CT, from 1-3 August, entitled “R-R-Remix! The Mashed Up Culture of Anime Fandom” and “State of the Otaku 2008.” I mention these because I have been reading through a book by one of my favorite beach-babe-turned-Harvard-professors, Chris Kelty, called Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, for a Harvard Free Culture mini-group project, which will henceforth be known as 2B2P for short, or the Two Bits Processor Project for long. This post will be a reaction and modulation of/against/for Chapter 1, Geeks and Recursive Publics, of Part 1, The Internet. I apologize in advance for this article’s long, rambling nature. If you comment, it’ll help me to organize my thoughts for the future.

Free software… to hormone-crazed, socially-bungling Japanophiles? Where’s the segue? On one hand, I could say the Internet (the title of Part 1, hey hey, coincidence?, I think not!) and only be half right. On one foot, I could say geeks, and become a tad closer to the answer. Doing a handstand, though, if I uttered “recursive public,” I just hit the bullseye. And on the topic of recursive publics is where I will tie in my latter, Connecticon-bound presentation. I want to bring in the demographic of fans of Japanese animation (also known colloquially as otaku), unrelated to any matter in the book, as an experiment in modulation: instead of responding directly to Kelty’s content, in this post I will try to flesh out, squish, and redefine the idea of recursive publics while applying the concept to another relevant population of geeks.

To begin, let’s simplify this notion of recursive public. Kelty’s definition essentially boils down to a population that deals with a content through a form, yet the content and form are the same thing. To develop it slightly further, a recursive public works through the form to protect the content mediated by the form. Kelty uses the Internet as his example, being the form that geeks use and through which geeks mediate. Geeks want to foster the Internet by coding the Internet to their own specifications (bounded by the geek moral order). Very meta indeed. Putting a quote against my simplification, “A recursive public is a public that is constituted by a shared concern for maintaining the means of association through which they come together as a public” (Kelty 28).

Recursive publics are not limited to geeks or the Internet. Kelty does not provide examples of branches. One possible example: American Republicans and Democrats might be considered inclusive to the recursive public scene. Political subtleties aside, both parties exist as part of the government — the medium through which they operate and the content on which they focus their operations. Government also is the medium that allows the parties to “come into being in the first place” (28).

But there’s more to recursive publics, in fact another element entirely. Kelty discusses the concept of “layers,” regarding which he says geeks can identify and connect to create new structures to operate the form. He writes, “[Geeks] express ideas, but they also express infrastructures through which ideas can be expressed (and circulated) in new ways” (29). This second element ties in with the idea that recursive publics “argue through” their medium(s)” (29). Kelty highlights the combination of Napster and network connections to form a miniature scale of the Internet at large. The layering process then provides additional support for the population of the recursive public to develop and protect the medium.

Otaku are part of a recursive public. However, the demographic of anime and manga fans interacting with their medium fundamentally challenges Kelty’s notion of the recursive public. Why: the anime fandom’s medium is, obviously, animation. However, most anime fans do not have the technical expertise or sometimes even amateur aptitude to interact with the animated medium. For anime fans, it is easy to “express ideas” yet difficult to “express infrastructures” (29).

I’ll step away from that difficulty for a moment. First, I want to tackle the ideology of the recursive public. In a long-winded explanation, Kelty basically argues that recursive publics operate through a type of morality, one that structures the goals of the community. To reiterate, geeks of the recursive public participate in “writing and publishing and speaking and arguing” but also make software for “circulation, archiving, movement, and modifiability” of those forms of rhetorical communication. In total, arguments and the methods employed to sculpt those arguments evolve into a sense of morality which will govern future arguments and methods. It’s all very cyclical, but “the circularity is essential to the phenomenon. A public might be real and efficacious, but its reality lies in just this reflexivity by which an addressable object is conjured into being in order to enable the very discourse that gives it existence” (48).

To return to the otaku: these geeks too share a moral ideology based in the medium of animation. Examples include the cease of the distribution of fansubs (subtitles added to the original Japanese animation, distributed for foreign audiences) once an animated series is licensed by a US company, or doujinshi (comic book remixes of series) that do not copy the original series but build upon it [this latter topic is discussed in Chapter 1 of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture]. This morality, then, continues on to affect what Kelty calls “changing relations of power and knowledge” (29). Japanese animation, particularly dealing with fans in the US, has challenged the current production market and copyright itself, particularly regarding Free Use. And although barely developed as that of the culture of free software, the power and authority in otaku culture continues to change, led by greats such as Toshio Okada and Takashi Murakami.

But I must return to and address the problem of the formulation of infrastructures when animation is the medium. Can a recursive public exist when a technical boundary is inherently set up in the public’s system? Let’s examine a possible route to the solution: topical and metatopical spaces. Kelty recognizes that geeks of free software do not congregate in topical spaces, meaning assembly in the physical arena, but instead “[knit] a plurality of spaces into one larger space of non-assembly” (39). Anime fans in the US, contrarily, began in so-called topical spaces (also known as mom’s basement), eventually immigrating to the Internet where the fandom now continues to thrive. Is it possible that because the culture of free software began online that its followers automatically shared the prowess necessary to participate fully in both argument and creation, and they shared such knowledge and capabilities between each other, while otaku might not possess these technical traits because they did not mature in the presence of the medium (layman’s terms: they weren’t animators, so should we expect them to animate?).

That’s certainly a pressing question to Toshio Okada, co-founder of Gainax (one of the original major Japanese animation production companies) and self-proclaimed Otaking. So pressing, in fact, that he has declared, “Otaku are dead.” What can he mean, when thousands of American anime fans are running around with their heads cut off at hundreds of conventions across the United States yearly. Just that: with their heads cut off, today’s fans have no direction.

In a public talk, recorded by Otaku2.com, Okada answered the following question:

You mentioned that there is a gap between fan generations, or yours and that of today. Can you elaborate on this?

Okada: I think there is a big difference that is clear in what is popular. Take manga, which is selling in the mainstream, and series popular with maniacs, which are not selling. “Clover and Honey” is a good example. Some people just buy it, some are fans and only a few are maniacs who really dive into the series, so it fails to move the masses. The manga becomes nothing but a topic of discussion among older men who compete on who read it more properly. When with others, these tangents don’t go well and a discussion never takes off. The media can’t talk about otaku as one anymore because we aren’t. There is no core literature or readership. I don’t think I can explain this well enought to convince you, but anyway.

Okada is famously known for his participation on the infamous otaku commentary, Otaku no Video, a major yet sardonic commentary on the state of otaku in Japan. As a producer, though, Okada exemplifies the paragon leader of the otaku recursive public: one who comments on and comments through the form. He sees, though, a major change in generations of otaku, which leads to his harsh declaration. Describing his own generation of anime fans, Okada said at MIT in 2003: “These were fans who were so passionate and enthusiastic about anime that they became vocal and informed critics.” Speaking of the modern anime fanatic, he stated, “Unfortunately… the latest generation of anime viewers in Japan are not true Otaku. They may be anime fans, but they lack the deep, passionate connection to the medium, and many of them seem to have taken up anime fandom because it’s cool or “fashionable.” Rather than being active critics of anime, they are content to be customers, or consumers.” Okada is right about many viewers even five years later, today, as teenagers attend anime conventions with nothing short of shoutouts to Naruto and Bleach. Still, there are some fans that put their critical eye to work to uphold the name of otaku, but cannot argue for anime through the infrastructure of animation. How should they be considered in a culture that began as a recursive public yet has in recent times reverted to a mere consumer culture? A younger Okada, seeing no good animation after the end of the original Gundam series way back when, participated in the creation of two original animated shorts, Daicon III and Diacon IV (the latter of which, if you watch it quickly, contains a homage to Star Wars of all things). The importance of these novelties remains the fact that the recursive public protects the content by arguing through the form. Okada’s message to young fans rings with Keltyism: “Just make your own anime, in English, by yourself.”

I’m not depressed. The phrase “All is not lost” is too drastic to use, yet it would encompass a little bit of the situation. But only a little, because the situation is improving. Paul “Otaking” Johnson recently published on YouTube a criticism of the online fansubbing community, a five-part video series which begins here. It’s just one example of the recursive public finally taking a stand once again. In an interview not too long ago, he stated, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. My video was free and I got paid nothing, but it didn’t stop me researching translation theory for a year or hand drawing and animating the cut scenes just to grab people’s attention (they certainly wouldn’t stick around for my voice, that’s for sure!),” which exemplifies exactly what Okada wanted out of the new otaku generation. Other models include Makoto Shinkai, who animated his own story, Voices of a Distant Star and went on to produce a number of other anime, or even the father of Japanese animation, Osamu Tezuka, who copied Disney’s style to form the foundation of what would compose anime fandom today, who animated for entertainment yet still included his own acute commentary on post-war Japan.

Back to the issue, though: What happens when a fan simply can’t do this sort of high-caliber work?

Layers. The second element in Kelty’s concept. What does Japanese animation become when applied to new intrastructural models? Doujinshi. Anime music videos. Cosplay. Fansubs. Remixed comic books. Reworked animation set to music. Dressing up as characters. Subtitling original show material. All these examples are miniature structures of the animation scene at large, yet do not require the ultimate technical expertise vital to the production of genuine animation. But Kelty does not approach the potential for layers to avoid manifestation as the actual infrastructure (eg. Internet) and instead form new forms of the infrastructure. Unfortunately, for free software in relation to the Internet, no new form of the infrastructure exists, because there is only one Internet. For anime, though, animation exists as media with many offsets. Anime fans congregate in topical and metatopical spaces. Otaku participate as much as possible as the true nature of the recursive public has begun to resurface over the last decade. Hopefully as technology advances fans will be provided a more accessible platform to evolve the recursive public and resurrect the name of otaku.

Please comment on this second post in the Two Bits Processor Project, and please visit the blogs of my friends who are participating with me on this most excellent project:

Tim Hwang, blogging at The U.S. Bureau of Fabulous Bitches
Christina Xu, blogging at ComPromise
yours truly, blogging at DianaKimball.com
Mike Wolfe, blogging at Machinations
And me, Alex Leavitt, blogging here

Tim Wu
Yochai Benkler
Terry Fisher

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YB

1st half of 1990s: telecom networks: demanding economies of scale; if wanted competition from incumbents, needed to allow competitors to share facilities; most controversial: bundling: allow competitors to use physical infrastructure; competition: building facilities ever closer to the home; redundant networks

what would happen w/ cable?

trend 2000: toward open access; a few cable enfranchising authorities; needed to think of it as direct communications;

initial reports: what we want: shift from idea that each pipe is competitive and we need multiple competitors; AOL merger: had to offer access to at least 3 other competitors; during period: shift from competition on each wire, to competition between two wires: moving away from open access

many policies passed between 2001-2008 that need to be revised
1) why can’t we have actual competition in physical infrastructure as the main model?
2) do we need an alternative workaround infrastructure that is public?
3) should we be focused on user-owned infrastructure? (buy device, create own local thing; buy own fiber to connect to public main?)

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TW

snapshot of where net neutrality is right now:

4 issues of network regulation:

1) payments: whether or not service providers can demand payments for delivering access to their customers
(see picture)
access fee: charge people to reach your customers (Ebay using Verizon to reach AT&T customers)
legislation: says fee can’t be charged

2) what is reasonable network management?
when can carrier delay or block or mess with connection between two parties on Internet for purposes of managing bandwidth?
unilateral approaches: not accepted

3) floating net neutrality norm that is sometimes enforced by FCC; what is form/scheme going to take?
ad hoc –if FCC sees something they’ll do something about it– system
right now: moving toward that
net neutrality: not supposed to transgress, when you do you get fined
common law development of what are acceptable/nonacceptable practices

4) Hollywood; what does Hollywood think of network neutrality? what side are the content industries on?
Hollywood: same situation that Ebay is in: studio: also has to pay?
hesitant about getting engaged with provider

this year: struggle in policy community to get allegiance of content providing community

—

TF

types of network neutrality:
content neutrality
application neutrality: bits are bits idea
sender neutrality: no discrimination between senders
toll free (tim’s #2 point): ISPs charge recipients

if we should allow discrimination:
1. discrimination is efficient
2. market should be making decisions
3. ISPs have freedom of speech rights
4. Internet: never been neutral: historical argument
5. moral argument: layer separation, truth in advertising

if curb discrimination:
1. ISPs: monopolies
2. preserve opportunities for innovation
3. major content providers will cut deals with ISPs
4. preservations of opportunities

[powerpoint graph]
content discrimination: clear
strong: sender neutrality, toll free
most strongly opposed: application neutrality

—

ETC.

options available to most consumers have diminished sharply:
- roughly 50% of consumers in the US have a choice among two broadband providers
- roughly 25% have access to only one provider
- roughly 25% don’t yet have access to any broadband providers
next few years: looking at monopoly/duopoly

• private networks should create virtual private networks, not use public Internet

• possibility of corporations paying piece of consumer fee to bring price down, and Internet companies can make up for it by advertising more, etc.

• if there is no competition, that’s fine; supposedly having a market but regulating it into a duopoly that is the problem; market or no market, choose!
• ultimately: only resource we have owned by nobody is feasible, we just haven’t built it