Mapping a World of Human Activity

misterbarnacles writes "A Cartography of the Anthropocene maps the various ways that global humanity connects and is interdependent. From the article: 'Using data gathered from U.S. government agencies, anthropologist Felix Pharand-Deschenes has created a collection of maps that illustrate the various circulatory systems that connect humanity: cities, roads, railways, power lines, pipelines, cable Internet, airlines, and shipping lanes. The maps are remarkable cartographic documents of our current age, but also serve deeper research and educational purposes.'"

Comments

Re:Which means...

[Wyatt Earp]

Geographical features really don't shape air traffic.

Not a car analogy:

[Tastecicles]

I used to use a simple program to monitor a couple IRC chatrooms; it created a timelapse map of interactions between members. It was fascinating to see the map literally breathe, but it also served a more important purpose in studying the interactions of those members with a 'bot script I created to run alongside. The results surprised me.

I went in expecting just one or two of the nerdier members interacting with the bot (the regulars knew it was a bot, the transients didn't) to "teach" it new responses to key words and phrases. What I found was pretty much everyone in the chatrooms interacting with the bot to the point of saturation. In fact I had to upgrade the hardware just so it could keep up.

I didn't have to look at the chat logs to see this behaviour, it was all on the maps and the ever increasing 'bot database.

FWIW, the mapping software was called PieSpy. I have since, unfortunately, lost the 'bot database and am not in a mind currently to recreate it.

Re:Not a car analogy:

[Tastecicles]

said the AC.

Re:Not a car analogy:

[Tastecicles]

Said the AC. If you're gonna call me do it with a UID.

Re:Not a car analogy:

[Tastecicles]

there's your version of the "truth" then there's mine. Guess what? I was there, my truth is based on fact. You weren't, your truth is based on your desire to be first in a pissing contest in which you were the only entrant because most of the rest of us have the maturity to take a man at his word.

Re:Not a car analogy:

[Tastecicles]

Ah, Wikipedia, that most reliable of sources... Would you please read this?

Try this for size; I did some collaboration with Dr. Jolanda Tromp after meeting her at a LUG open day, from which I started the research on IRC. This was while she was writing her paper on CoVEn and following projects (IIRC CoVEn got an extension of four years), out of which she gained her post-Doctorate. I have a hardcopy of her thesis "Systematic Usability Design and Evaluation for Collaborative Virtual Environments (2001)" which she personally gave me in recognition of my efforts. Then she moved into a cave house in Spain and we kept in touch for a few years via Second Life (Bluepill island) after that.

Re:Which means...

[Geek70]

To some degree, they do. Airport locations have clear requirements and flight paths avoid population centres when possible due to noise pollution. Mountain ranges or areas with known volatile weather patterns also dictate some flight paths. This is mainly for smaller aircraft rather than the truly high-flying international flights.

Re:How long

[AHuxley]

The throbbing bright animated choke points with very very few expensive interconnects between telco thiefdoms.

Better Link

[ideonexus]

I think a Link to the Original Images is preferable. These are much larger, there are more of them, and some are javascript rollovers.

Re:Better Link

[zzyzyx]

Thanks for this. This is very annoying to see posted a bunch of images resized just to fit the stupid layout and then have to play the "via" game.
For this one I counted 5 hops :
Shareable
via MyModernMet
via Visual News
via inhabitat.com
via The Telegraph

Some of them linked to the globaia website but none to the actual relevant page.

Surprisingly, there are other connections

[WillAffleckUW]

While this is great news for the FBI and CIA and the other groups I shall not name (given my past SECRET clearance), there are other connections as well.

Just today one of the people who has been reading my twitter posts (mostly thru RTs) finally realized my pic was at the exact same place her pic was at, on Mount Washburn at Yellowstone Park, and, in point of fact, had been taken within a day or two of when mine was.

Even though we were both from Seattle and this was quite a distance away.

A good analyst would realize that pictures taken by different people have value-added connections that indicate shared values, aspirations, and other connection points, which is how, if we wanted to actually stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons like the other 15 nuclear nations in the Middle East and adjacent countries that aren't in NATO, we could find agents to tap and trace them.

But that would be obvious.

And impossible to defeat.

Re:Surprisingly, there are other connections

[khallow]

A good analyst would realize that pictures taken by different people have value-added connections that indicate shared values, aspirations, and other connection points, which is how, if we wanted to actually stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons like the other 15 nuclear nations in the Middle East and adjacent countries that aren't in NATO, we could find agents to tap and trace them.

Three things. First, there are two current nuclear powers in the Middle East, Israel and Pakistan. Second, pictures of Yellowstone don't give you any value concerning Iranian nuclear programs. You have to have pictures from the relevant locations. And that's the thing that Iran and any other country with half a brain has figured out. Don't let people take pictures of your secret locations and the above analysis can't be done.

Finally, we already know Iran has a nuclear program. That knowledge hasn't stopped them from continuing. What has slowed them down is a fairly clever bit of sabotage and perhaps killing a few people in key positions.

Re:Surprisingly, there are other connections

[aaaaaaargh!]

What has slowed them down is a fairly clever bit of sabotage and perhaps killing a few people in key positions.

Yes, and slowing down plus creating a lot of additional hatred is the only thing these measures will ever achieve. Unless you continually bomb their universities and research facilities, a developed country that wants to build a nuclear weapon will at one day or another be able to build one. (Of course, it also doesn't help that the US and Israel already have many more nuclear weapons than Iran, it's neighboring country has recently been attacked and conquered by the US, and the US and Israel have de facto waged more attack wars than Iran.)

Re:Surprisingly, there are other connections

[WillAffleckUW]

Three things. First, there are two current nuclear powers in the Middle East, Israel and Pakistan

Bzzt. Wrong.

There are more.

Re:Surprisingly, there are other connections

[khallow]

There are more.

Name them.

Re:Surprisingly, there are other connections

[WillAffleckUW]

You don't have clearance.

Re:Surprisingly, there are other connections

[khallow]

So your claim is bullshit. Why am I not surprised?

Re:Surprisingly, there are other connections

[Xest]

We know other countries have tried, like Syria, but thus far failed, but the vast majority of other countries simply couldn't afford a nuclear program, let alone succesfully follow one through unnoticed by the rest of the world. Potentially some of the ex-soviet states could have hidden arsenals but I don't think that would be possible as Russia is a key member of the NPT so would likely admit to that and force decommissioning of those arms in those countries as happened with the Ukraine. Certainly if as he said, 15 other countries than Israel had nuclear programs then basically there'd be no point having the NPT anymore and neither the US nor Russia would be willing to reduce armament under it as the whole of the middle east would basically be nuclear capable.

Besides, he said he only had secret clearance not top secret so wouldn't be privy to that sort of information anyway, and frankly people who really are security cleared at this level aren't so insecure as to need to flaunt it on the internet. They'd never clear someone that emotionally weak with so much vulnerability to for example, people like Anna Chapman, in the first place.

Any lower level stuff he might have had access to if cleared for secret level access is frankly actually much more mudane and boring, for example you may have access at this level if you were producing or repackaging some training materials for the military and whilst you could tell people what you were doing the secret part would be the contents of those materials. This one example, but as I say, it's really not that exciting.

So yeah, he's full of shit.

Re:Nova Scotia Exists!

[WillAffleckUW]

Mostly due to This Hour Has 22 Minutes and the move to Internet by the province.

Which you can follow on twitter.

Re:Now that...

[kermidge]

Yup. Might neat stuff, indeed. I'd like to see this integrated with Google Earth.

Except South America and Australia...

[wanzeo]

... you are not important enough to show.

Re:Nova Scotia Exists!

[WillAffleckUW]

I assume that by 'the province' you mean the provincial government, because I was on the net in 1990 in the dungeons of the dal. I was video chatting before most people had heard of the web with cu-seeme.

I only started so late because I was born too late.

We've had the net for a while.

I know, I used to be on the Net back at SFU in the late 70s.