Visualization of an Urban Cyberscape

We recently created this visualization of an urban cyberscape. In other words, the online extension of the socially constructed human landscape in which the lines between material place and digital representations of place blur.

It is this hyrbid space that floatingsheep.org is focused on mapping and analyzing.

More info at the FAQ

NOTE: The original title of this post should have read cyberscape, not cyberspace. These are the problems associated with making up words...

Guest Map: The Burger Force

The cyber-badger recently sent us this fascinating map of the "burger force" of fast-food restaurants in the US made by Stephen Von Worley.

Worley describes "burger force" as:

...a field of energy that radiates from every freshly-cooked patty, earth-penetrating and inverse-squared with distance, compelling the hungry carnivore to seek out and devour the well-done ground beef at the source.

Unlike all of the maps featured on this blog, the "burger force" map is not based on user-created content. It is rather based on the actual locations of businesses. For those interested in the data behind the map check out AggData. It should therefore be interesting to see how similar a map user-created content referencing the same terms will be. Or in other words, is the burger force of McDonald's as strong in cyberscapes as it is throughout most of the US?

Good thing we are currently running searches on "colonel sanders" and "ronald mcdonald".

References to Slum, Ghetto and Poverty

Building upon our earlier maps of rich and poor, we were curious whether there was much difference between user generated references to slum, ghetto and poverty.

As the global map below indicates the differences seem to be primarily based on language with English speaking countries (U.S., Canada, the U.K. Australia and New Zealand) where references to poverty dominate.

Global Map of Slum, Ghetto, and Poverty

This difference becomes clearer as one zooms into the European regional level where references to ghetto appear to be most prevalent in non-English speaking zones. It is likely that this is tied to ghetto being a more internationalized term than poverty and thus shows up more outside the Anglophone world. But overall one can see that these particular search terms are not used ubiquitously across language groups, highlighting again the importance of using non-linguistic keywords for search, e.g., the number 1, or words that are generally unchanged across space. For example, maps of the names of well know international figures like "paris hilton" [1] or "osama bin laden" (this is probably the first time those two have been in the same sentence!).

European Map of Slum, Ghetto, and Poverty

Looking at North America therefore is helpful as it represents largely English speaking (apologies to Quebec and Mexico). While it is clear that there are more mentions of poverty than either slum or ghetto there are some intriguing patterns.

North American Map of Slum, Ghetto, and Poverty

For example, places where references to slum are the most prevalent are relatively rare but do seem to correspond with poor areas such as Watts in Los Angeles and some neighborhoods in Philadelphia and New York. The term ghetto also appears to be most frequent in urban settings (although not all) with the cities of Tampa, Gainesville, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, Oakland and Sacramento representing clusters.

Since the term poverty greatly overshadows occurrences of slum or ghetto we also generated a map which just those terms. It is not clear why these differences are here but may simple point to regional linguist preferences with the U.S.

North American Map of Slum and Ghetto

Again, this mapping does not signifying a particular economic fortune in any one area but the prevalence of an array of terms associated with economically disadvantaged areas. Still it produces some intriguing patterns.

[1] Which of course bring up its own problems in the city of Paris and the Hilton Hotel. Maybe we should try Nicole Richie instead?

Cybergeographies of Peace and War

Which parts of the world are defined by peacefulness? And, maybe more importantly, which parts of the world are blanketed by references to war? To answer these questions we decided to do global-level keyword searches for the terms "war" and "peace."

The map below shows that these terms have very complicated yet compelling geographies. On the global scale there seems to be two stark war/peace divides. The first one appears to run roughly along the Prime Meridian, with most places in Europe to the east of the line having more references to war, and places to the west of it with more placemarks contain the word peace. In North America, we see a clear difference between Canada and its larger neighbour to the south. Very few parts of Canada are represented by more references to war than peace. The United States in contrast has a far more complicated geography of peace and war.



It is difficult to discern any coherent spatial patterns in the zoomed-in, North American map of war and peace. We do, however, see that Colorado and eastern Massachusetts are pretty peaceful places. (I'm sure we're going to get lots of comments on that one). Also, despite the abundance of references to war, almost everyone on the continent can escape close to somewhere else dominated by virtual references to peace.


We see quite different geographies of these terms in other parts of the world. Much of Asia is not characterised by references to either term. But, there are a few clear patterns. The Bangkok metropolitan region is covered by a cluster of references to war. The reasons are unclear as to why, but perhaps link back to our Thai findings in the analysis we conducted on the geographies of virtual references to zombies. OK, we're grasping at straws on this one.

Japan and Korea in contrast are defined by far more references to peace. However, note the line of war references along the South-North Korea border.

The European war/peace map is perhaps the most interesting in the set. The starkest difference is between mainland Europe (far more references to war) and Switzerland the British Isles (far more references to peace). This is something you would expect in Switzerland given its long history of neutrality, but why the British Isles home to Manchester City fans and other assorted football holligans?.

One explanation is that on much of the continent a lot of the references to war can probably be traced to frequent use of German in placemarks (the word "war" in German means "was" in English so is probably used quite often). For example, "Ich war ruhig, bis das Zombie nach Hause gekommen war und versuchte, mein Gehirn zu essen." or I was peaceful until the death-challenge individual came to my house for a snack.

Yet this fact only strengthen's Switzerland's highly peaceful cyberspaces. Despite the fact that German is a widely-used language in the country, there are still more virtual references to peace in most parts of Switzerland.

There are also some intriguing similiarities between more references to peace and the battlefields of WWI and II. Especially the differences between Northern France and Southern France.

In peace...

Floatingsheep's New Logo and Master Plan (?)

It is with great pride that we introduce our new mascot/logo for Floatingsheep.org. We're actively soliciting suggestions for its name (and for that matter its gender).

Why did we feel compelled to create a logo? We're glad you asked.

Being denizens of the 21st century, we realize that branding is key to the well-being of any organization. And even though floatingsheep hardly qualifies on that count, we have high hopes of someday becoming one of the most trusted names in obscure maps of Internet phenomenon. We're looking at YOU Atlas of Cyberspace! Our floating sheep will take on your cyberbadger anytime!

Plus we wanted to make some t-shirts.

Whatever the reason we are blog with a logo and a plan. Unfortunately the plan revolves largely about what we will have for lunch.

So we submit to you gentle readers, what should we do? T-shirts, coffee mugs, breakfast cereal....? We'll stop there as the possible branding opportunities are making us a bit dizzy. We don't really expect anyone to buy these things (besides us and maybe our moms) but like the idea of their existence, even if but in cyberspace.

Also, are there any student readers who are currently in a marketing/business class in need of a semester project? Art students looking to apply a floating sheep brand in interesting ways? Social theorists looking to critique the hell out of this dubious enterprise?

We offer unlimited opportunity but alas severely limited financial gains as in nothing (or perhaps a floating sheep t-shirt when they come into existence).

Sounds like a great deal? Yes? Yes?.....hello, anyone there?

Interested parties please email us at zook [at) uky dot edu

p.s. And also for no particular reason, we offer a video of political ad from California about the upcoming gubernatorial primary which features a Demon Sheep (go to about 2:20) that some of the Floating Sheep Collective think looks like our new mascot. Others, however, point out that linking our new brand with the spawn of Satan would likely NOT be seen as a positive connection. But what do we know?