Charting Virtual Worlds

Myrioandme writes "Since the inception of the Internet, cybergeographers have been trying to draw maps of cyberspace. The results have been mixed, but a new book brings together some of the most interesting -- and breathtaking -- maps of virtual worlds. Wired is carrying the full story."

Comments

Use the technology

[1alpha7]

"We're still looking for the Mercator projection of cyberspace. We're not there yet. The map of the Web is still waiting to be drawn."

Its the Web. How about ditching the paper and using a VR approach? As in, take advantage of tech, rather than just "appreciate them artistically".

1Alpha7

How sensible is this?

[gusnz]

This seems pretty damn cool from a desktop-wallpaper point of view, but how practical is this?

The 'net is pretty fluid and dynamic, as companies are going bankrupt and starting up all the time. Soon we'll be able to build the map from just a couple of major carriers' networks ;).

Seriously, these things are probably outdated as soon as they're finished. What are the chances of a real-time distributed mapping effort, where networks are dynamically scanned and the data is collated every few days on a few central nodes? It would be very interesting to see not just how the 'net is wired, but to view the shifting dynamics of traffic and connections in a handy animated format.

Sites like Internet Traffic Report get a little bit of the way there, but are too numeric. Ideas?

They're beautiful, but are these maps useful?

[hillct]

They're nice to look at but is it really useful to represent the internet in this way? Surely there is a more meaningful representation that is of equal or greater esthetic value. Perhaps a rendering similar to the constructs associated with Everything2. This could be achieved through analysis and visualization of the relevence data used by Google and Teoma to generate their results, where significant material is emphesized. Granted this would not produce a network map, but rather a contant map, ilustrating regional housing of particularly meaningful or valuable content. It would however, include content available using any protocol for which there is a URL representation.

Granted content pamming is not what they were going for, but it would have the side effect of displaying network topology with respect to relitive routing and bandwith capacities (utilization anyway).

--CTH

Why Oh Why

[vulgarDPS]

I can see the use of Network Maps, ISP's connection maps to the Internet, maybe a map of the Root Name Servers and what ISP's connect to which, but for god sakes a map of the internet. It sounds like something they would talk about on an AOL chat room while being no where NEAR the internet.

Re:Things to consider

[grammar nazi]

I think that we should wait until the net is more similar to a Distributed-MMORG before we create detailed maps of it. After all, we currently don't need to try and find our way around the net in a 2 dimensional manner for which we commonly use maps as tools.

Once we have more of a virtual world, then the maps can contain land, portals, regions with boundaries (private networks would be similar to a border that we didn't know or couldn't map what was contained within.

As far as physiscal geography of the servers goes, this will become less and less of an issue as the physical content of the Net becomes distributed accross borders and servers. Of course, this is an optimistic view, but I'm entitled to it.