-
Doggerland – Mapping a lost world
Next nature featured one of those discoveries to emerge out of archeology that cannot help but give one a smile of pause and a thought that this too, indeed, will pass. Doggerland is the name of a vast plain that joined Britain to Europe for nearly 12,000 years, until sea levels began rising dramatically after ...
-
DARPA brings Web 2.0 prowess to the battlefield
An interesting interview about TIGR, a recently deployed DARPA project in Afghanistan and Iraq. With a timeliness which is impressive for its contemporary awareness, TIGR integrates many layers of data (satellite photos, census data, road conditions) with metadata generated by military patrols (attack reports, experience with certain houses, etc). In this way, knowledge that is ...
-
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 ...
-
On rogues of the high seas and the hunt for bounty
Marvelously fluttering around the margins of the mediascape during the past few days has been news of a hijacking by a group of Somali pirates of some heavy old world war-fighting technology. Piracy on the high seas is certainly something that excites the imagination filled with tales from yesteryear’s maritime literature and folk stories told ...
-
An upright and locked position: early aviation
In an old brief case, I came across a map of Western Europe published by National Geographic in 1929. One of the plates published in the margin included a map of the passenger airline service as it existed at the time. [Link to full map ~1MB] I imagine that the Budapest –> Vienna flight must ...
-
The chilly curiosities of nation states
Durham University’s International Boundaries Research Unit has drawn up the first ever ‘Arctic Map‘ to show the disputed territories that states might lay claim to in the future. The new map design follows a series of historical and ongoing arguments about ownership, and the race for resources, in the frozen lands and seas of the ...
-
Surfing on Titan and other saturnalian abandons
Scientists have confirmed that at least one body in the solar system, other than Earth, has a surface liquid lake by using an instrument on NASA’s Cassini orbiter. The 235km long lake, situated near the moon’s south pole, is ringed by a dark beach, where the methane rich lake merges with a bright shoreline. Titan ...
-
A ghost image from a cosmic disaster
The “Pillars of Creation†may be the most iconic Hubble photograph ever taken. Located in the Eagle Nebula (google sky), the pillars are clouds of molecular hydrogen, light years in length, where new stars are being born. However, recent discoveries indicate these pillars were destroyed by a massive nearby superÂnova some 6,000 years ago. This ...
-
The frontier of history and lost cities
For part of the 10th century, this pocket of northwestern Cambodia was the capital of the famed Angkorian empire, a sprawling city studded with homes, irrigation channels, and more than 1,000 temples. Satellite photography helps archaeologists survey this land mine laden and largely unexplored site. [via ] Bit-rot, book worms, city swallowing hurricanes. The archaeologist ...
-
Mapping infrastructure, part 2
Just came across this advertisement from a September 1914 edition of Modern Mechanix [via the Map Room] that shows all of the telephone exchanges that existed in the US at that time. (Aside: in a North American phone number, the “555″ is the exchange: 1-XXX-555-YYYY). Propoganda value asside, it is quite a fascinating map. We ...
-
Infrastructure visualization
Ben Fry, a data visualization artist and teacher, compiled the above image of the US. As he describes it, All of the streets in the lower 48 United States: an image of 26 million individual road segments. No other features (such as outlines or geographic features) have been added to this image, however they emerge ...
-
Geospatial imaging and human rights
Wired today featured a profile of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) efforts to bring satellite reconnaissance photography to bear upon human rights violations within closed societies like North Korea and disputed territories like the Gaza Strip. They work with NGO’s and regional groups to help provide and disseminate documentary evidence of ...