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TECHNOLOGY
FOR SOME TIME now, I have followed the work of Edward Tufte of Yale University Among his many books and publications, my favorites are The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and the somewhat less technical Visual Explanations. I heartily recommend the latter. In the introduction to Visual Explanations, Tufte writes, "Assessments of change, dynamics, and cause and effect are at the heart of thinking and explanations. This book describes strategies -- the proper arrangement in space and time of images, words, numbers - for presenting information."1 This column is a sampler of the kinds of visual explanations or visualizations that are becoming increasingly available on the Internet. Incidentally, Tufte has an online discussion forum on his website (www.edwardtufte.com).
A few days ago, I stumbled onto the most incredible website, The Atlas of Cyberspaces. Here is an introduction from the site's main page:
Welcome to the Atlas of Cyberspaces. This is an atlas of maps and graphic representations of the geographies of the new electronic territories of the Internet, the World-Wide Web, and other emerging Cyberspaces. These maps of Cyberspaces - cybermaps - help us visualise and comprehend the new digital landscapes beyond our computer screen, in the wires of the global communications networks and vast online information resources. The cybermaps, like maps of the real world, help us navigate the new information landscapes, as well being objects of aesthetic interest. They have been created by "cyberexplorers" of many different disciplines and from all corners of the world.
Some of the maps you will see in the Atlas of Cyberspaces will appear familiar, using the cartographic conventions of realworld maps; however, many of the maps are much more abstract representations of electronic spaces, using new metrics and grids.2
The site has maps, visual representations, images, interactive 3-D panoramas, and video animations organized under such headings as Conceptual, Artistic, Geographic, Topology, Info Spaces, ISP maps, and so on. I was so fascinated by the site and its stunning visuals that I spent several hours browsing its contents. (Of course, I should have been writing this column.) In the Artistic area of the site, I found a fascinating 12-minute QuickTime movie titled "Warriors of the Net" (www.warriorsofthe.net). This animated movie explains visually how IP packets travel...