Along what dimension is cyberspace?

In 2001, Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin published an Atlas of Cyberspace, described by Vint Cerf as “explor[ing] a remarkable universe of visual representations of the Internet’s diversity, structure and content.” The atlas locates cyberspace along many dimensions: geographic maps of core fiber optic back bones, logical maps of network organization and hierarchy, social maps showing the relationships between individual users in virtual worlds, hierarchy trees of web page design, world maps from 3-d shooters, etc. While some of the visualizations, designed to shock and awe through their graphical sophistication, have become curious artifacts in their own right, almost like a first generation iPod, harkening back to simpler times, the book itself promises not to disappoint. The good news is that it has been re-released under a Creative Commons license and can be downloaded here. There is a 20MB low-res version and a 200+MB high-res version.

Arpanet’s geographical configuration, 1975

Submarine fiber optic cables in the Caribbean

“Great Circle” map designed as a bit of marketing ephemera for the Cable and Wireless Company, showing the global connectivity of its telecommunications network, with Britain centered representing its position as “hub of the world”, 1945

The huge and dense mesh of connections shows the social geography of LambdaMOO, a multi-user dimension, by mapping how over half of the 4,800 or so players related to each other. LambdaMOO was a well-established and well-known virtual environment created at Xerox PARC in 1990. The map was created using social statistics gathered by Cobot, a software agent that “lived” in LambdaMOO, sitting in the “living room” and observing the social interactions of players. 2000