New Article on Wikileaks Published in Antipode

For those interested in Wikileaks, a new publication (co-authored with Sue Roberts and Anna Secor) based on the Wikileaks mapping we did in December 2010 is now available. Drop me a line if you don't have library access.

Critical Infrastructure: Mapping the Leaky Plumbing of US Hegemony
by Sue Roberts, Anna Secor, Matthew Zook
Antipode Volume 44, Issue 1, pages 5–9, January 2012

Geopolitical mappings of the world can say as much about the vulnerabilities of hegemony as about aspirations to power. Mappings of US geostrategic interests are no exception. Recent national security priorities, the details of which were revealed in leaked diplomatic cables, include the identification of sites around the world deemed critical to the US (US Department of State 2009). From beaches where trans-oceanic cables emerge, to factories making vaccines, to maritime routes and ports, sites of particular vulnerability are assembled. The cartographic effect of this assemblage is a partial and highly distributed mapping of the fragile material underpinnings of US power.

The Iron Sheep has landed! Location information for the event

We are happy to announce that we have finalized a location for Iron Sheep. It will take place at Pivotal Labs located at 841 Broadway, Eighth Floor, New York City. (nearby subway stops are 14th Street - Union Square for the L, N, Q, R, 4, 5, and 6 lines, see google map). Many thanks to the good folks of Pivotal Labs (especially Josh Knowles and Magda Kozak) for providing the space and Javier de la Torre for making the connection.

We're quite excited about all who have registered and there is still space available (you can register here). Please contact email us (zook [at] uky.edu) if you have any questions.

When: Sunday February 26th 2012, 5 pm to 9 pm; Happy Hour(s) to follow (During the Association of American Geographers Meeting in NYC)

A panel discussion of the event will take place at the AAG conference at 8 am on Tuesday (Feb 28th) in Conference Room E, Lower Level, Sheraton Hotel

Overview of the "Iron Sheep" Event

Pack up your laptop, grab your data and head to New York for the first annual "lightning mapping of user generated information" event. Dubbed Iron Sheep (at least until someone objects) the event seeks to mimic the format of the “Iron Chef” television series. This workshop challenges participants (grouped into teams with members from diverse backgrounds and skill sets) to produce meaningful analysis and fun, evocative mash-ups from the same sets of user-generated, geo-coded data within a four hour time frame. The goal is to provide a semi-structured environment where participants can socialize and work in a fun yet socially meaningful project. Participants will be drawn from academic, industry and artistic communities from around the world.

Teams will be assigned a targeted question (e.g., What is the most “out of shape” location in the U.S.? or How can we visualize the Occupy Wall Street movement? or Where is the most likely place for the zombie apocalypse to start? or Where is the origin and destination of Super PAC money?) and use crowdsourced data to create a new geo-visualization. Teams can also choose their own questions. The exact questions and datasets depends on the participants who join (see below).

Organizers

• the Floating Sheep collective
• the Oxford Internet Institute
• GeoIQ
• the New Mappings Collaboratory at the University of Kentucky
• Vizzuality
  

Confirmed Attendees

• Jeremy Crampton, University of Kentucky
• Mike Goodchild*, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Sean Gorman, GeoIQ
• Mark Graham, FloatingSheep and Oxford Internet Institute
• Muki Haklay, University College London
• Lize Mogel, Editor, An Atlas of Radical Cartography
• Stéphane Roche, Laval University
• Taylor Shelton, FloatingSheep and Clark University
• Monica Stephens, FloatingSheep and University of Arizona
• Javier de la Torre, Vizzuality
• Andrew Turner, GeoIQ
• Sarah Williams, Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia University
• Matt Wilson, University of Kentucky
• Matthew Zook, FloatingSheep and University of Kentucky

* Will attend the panel on Tuesday but not the "lighting mapping" event on Sunday

How to attend
This event is open (register here) although the price of entry is that each participants contributes a dataset that is not commonly available (ideally crowdsourced) or one that has been enhanced in a meaningful and useful way. Data that is relatively comprehensive for the U.S. or world would work best, although something focused specifically on New York City would be appropriate as well. The goal is to have enough commonality between datasets that it is possible to do mashups. There will also likely be a "secret sauce" dataset (again borrowing from the Iron Chef idea) that all mappers would be challenged to include.

The organizers will likely be contributing the following data sets:

• The retail cost of marijuana at the city, county and state level (based on PriceofWeed.com reports);
• Busted meth labs;
• Some slice of geo-coded tweets;

Serious or offbeat datasets are both extremely welcome as we are hoping for the serendipity that comes from the new mashing of data – such as the Beer Belly of America. For example, we'd love to end up with a combination of data sets that includes things like:

• Super-PAC contributions;
• Flickr photos tagged with the word "cat";
• Precinct level voting records;
• VW bug ownerships;
• Sales of Twinkies and/or iPhones;
• Foursquare check ins at bars versus grocery stores;
• Spending on political ads.
• Grindr.com and/or BarebackRT.com check-ins;
• OK Cupid dating information

Protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA)

Today across the Internet, web sites and services are protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) currently in play in the U.S. congress.

Floating Sheep is joining this protest because the bills (as currently written) give extraordinary and wide sweeping power to major media companies as would be bad for the exchange of ideas and content that is the Internet.

Wikipedia has a nice overview on the issues surrounding these bills and currently has a nice form that provides contact information for U.S. representatives and senators.

Announcing "Iron Sheep": Map and Hack Day, February 26th @ AAG

Announcing "Iron Sheep"

Pack up your laptop, grab your data and head to New York for the first annual "lightning mapping of user generated information" event. Dubbed Iron Sheep (at least until someone objects) the event seeks to mimic the format of the “Iron Chef” television series. This workshop challenges participants (grouped into teams with members from diverse backgrounds and skill sets) to produce meaningful analysis and fun, evocative mash-ups from the same sets of user-generated, geo-coded data within a four hour time frame. The goal is to provide a semi-structured environment where participants can socialize and work in a fun yet socially meaningful project. Participants will be drawn from academic, industry and artistic communities from around the world.

Teams will be assigned a targeted question (e.g., What is the most “out of shape” location in the U.S.? or How can we visualize the Occupy Wall Street movement? or Where is the most likely place for the zombie apocalypse to start? or Where is the origin and destination of Super PAC money?) and use crowdsourced data to create a new geo-visualization. Teams can also choose their own questions. The exact questions and datasets depends on the participants who join (see below).

When: Sunday February 26th 2012, 5 pm to 9 pm; Happy Hour(s) to follow
(During the Association of American Geographers Meeting in NYC)

A panel discussion of the event will take place at the AAG conference at 8 am on Tuesday (Feb 28th) in Conference Room E, Lower Level, Sheraton Hotel

Where: New York City, exact location to be announced (depending upon number of attendees)

Organizers

• the Floating Sheep collective
• the Oxford Internet Institute
• GeoIQ
• the New Mappings Collaboratory at the University of Kentucky
• Vizzuality
  

Confirmed Attendees

• Jeremy Crampton, University of Kentucky
• Mike Goodchild*, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Sean Gorman, GeoIQ
• Mark Graham, FloatingSheep and Oxford Internet Institute
• Muki Haklay, University College London
• Lize Mogel, Editor, An Atlas of Radical Cartography
• Stéphane Roche, Laval University
• Taylor Shelton, FloatingSheep and Clark University
• Monica Stephens, FloatingSheep and University of Arizona
• Javier de la Torre, Vizzuality
• Andrew Turner, GeoIQ
• Sarah Williams, Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia University
• Matt Wilson, University of Kentucky
• Matthew Zook, FloatingSheep and University of Kentucky

* Will attend the panel on Tuesday but not the "lighting mapping" event on Sunday

How to attend
This event is open (register here) although the price of entry is that each participants contributes a dataset that is not commonly available (ideally crowdsourced) or one that has been enhanced in a meaningful and useful way. Data that is relatively comprehensive for the U.S. or world would work best, although something focused specifically on New York City would be appropriate as well. The goal is to have enough commonality between datasets that it is possible to do mashups. There will also likely be a "secret sauce" dataset (again borrowing from the Iron Chef idea) that all mappers would be challenged to include.

The organizers will likely be contributing the following data sets:

• The retail cost of marijuana at the city, county and state level (based on PriceofWeed.com reports);
• Busted meth labs;
• Some slice of geo-coded tweets;

Serious or offbeat datasets are both extremely welcome as we are hoping for the serendipity that comes from the new mashing of data – such as the Beer Belly of America. For example, we'd love to end up with a combination of data sets that includes things like:

• Super-PAC contributions;
• Flickr photos tagged with the word "cat";
• Precinct level voting records;
• VW bug ownerships;
• Sales of Twinkies and/or iPhones;
• Foursquare check ins at bars versus grocery stores;
• Spending on political ads.
• Grindr.com and/or BarebackRT.com check-ins;
• OK Cupid dating information

Good vs. Evil: One Final Holiday Map

With the various rounds of travel and vacation at end of December break we ran out of time to post the entries for the second round of Satan/Santa maps. This is an issue that we now want to make right and since we received only one addition entry it makes choosing a winner very simple! But this does NOT mean that the map or the technique used to create it falls short of our stringent Floating Sheep standards. Indeed the map below submitted by Tom Koehler is a great example of the willingness to apply stringent GIS techniques to somewhat messy data [1] about an offbeat subject.

After combining a range of terms -- Satan, Satan Santa, Zombie, Bad Santa, Evil Santa, Devil and Lucifer -- Tom "created a surface raster of the results. I suppose there is some argument to be made over creating a contiguous surface from absolute data, but I figure the search hits aren't exactly absolute since they're searching a radius around that point." We suspect that the resulting map would look similar whether Tom used summed or absolute data but greatly appreciate the fact that he raised it as a possible issue/critique.


The resulting map of "more bad" clearly is shaped by major population centers; after all, population density is a key (albeit not the only) driver of geoweb material. Still some cities known for their "badness" such as Las Vegas, New Orleans and Miami come off relatively less bad than others, especially the Northeast. I guess Santa is looking forward to catching some time in the sun and warmth as well.

In any case, thanks to Tom for his map and he will be receiving his prizes in the mail soon.

[1] Is there any other kind of data?

Augmented realities and uneven geographies

In the "better late than never category" we offer the presentation that Mark and I gave last September at the iCS-OII symposium. The paper version is available as well is you email me.

Augmented Realities and Uneven Geographies

View more presentations from Mark Graham

Floatingsheep's Top 11 of 2011

With the end of 2011 upon us, it is a good time to reflect on our year as a whole, especially the things we've been doing right this year. So in the spirit (of self promotion), we offer the Top 11 Floatingsheep posts of 2011!

1. The Price of Weed

Arguably our most successful map ever, and easily the most popular of 2011, at least 66,000 people have viewed this map on the blog -- not to mention all of the people who saw it in Wired Magazine and various other places around the web -- in just the four months or so since it was posted.

2. Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part I: Zombies or Old People?
An analysis of the spatial distributions of zombies and old people showed significant clusters of old people in Germany and France, but revealed a fairly random pattern across the United States. Remember to take caution when zombie hunting, as we want to minimize possible damage done to grannies everywhere.

3. Map of Per-capita Mobile Phone Subscriptions

Mark's map of mobile phone subscriptions across the world showed another slice of the digital divide: a country's wealth and ICT usage aren't universally correlated in the same way as, say, internet penetration rates, though the digital divide isn't always best measured at the aggregate level of the nation-state.

4. The Floatingsheep Take on Casual Sex

Our take on OKCupid's assertion that searching for casual sex is correlated with higher GDP per capita around the world. Really, all we found is that European's are very interested in casual sex.

5. Data Shadows of an Underground Economy

Interestingly enough, a post with no real maps was the 5th most trafficked post of the year -- though Matt, Mark and Monica's paper on the role of volunteered geographic information in measuring illicit economies of marijuana trafficking is very interesting.

6. The (Expanded) Pop vs. Soda Debate
Coke. Pop. Soda. Soft drink. We thought the debate would never end. Until we made this map. Oh, people still aren't done arguing about this?

7. Santa vs. The League of Darkness

Despite a year of less Holiday-themed maps this time of year, the comparisons of references to Santa, Satan and Zombies quickly became on of the year's most popular posts. Got any suggestions for next year's maps?

8. Mapping Male Enhancement: Distorting Size the Old Fashioned Way

Another post featuring no original maps, this was our critique of a dubious map purporting to know the average penis size across the world. A funny thought, but also a teaching moment for why issues of accuracy and authority continue to be relevant to those studying the geoweb.

9. Rise of the Slacker Strata

Though Monica's brilliant mashup of the Price of Weed and Beer Belly of America maps was only the 9th most popular post of the year, it has already been immortalized in a Floatingsheep t-shirt.

10. Geographies of the World's Knowledge
Some of Mark and Monica's work on mapping knowledge across the world -- from newspapers to academic publishers, to Flickr photos, Wikipedia entries and user-generated information in Google Maps.

11. Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part VIII: Voodoo

The final part of our extensive series on the virtual geographies of the zombie apocalypse, this post focused on the connections between zombies and their origins in Voodoo mysticism.

We expect 2012 to be another good year for us, so keep following the blog in the new year! And be sure to let us know if you have any suggestions for maps you'd like to see!