The Atlas of Cyberspace, by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, is the first comprehensive book to explore the spatial and visual nature of cyberspace and its infrastructure.

"The Atlas of Cyberspace explores a remarkable universe of visual representations of the Internet's diversity, structure and content." --Vint Cerf, Chairman, ICANN

What does cyberspace look like?

For thousands of years, people have created maps of the world around them -- cave paintings, drawings in the sand, pencil sketches, lavish manuscripts, 3D models and, more recently, satellite images and computer-generated simulations. Now, a new generation of cartographers is focusing on a different realm: cyberspace.

Here for the first time is an examination and selection of their maps, gathered together into one comprehensive source: the Atlas of Cyberspace. Written in accessible style and illustrated with over 300 full colour images, the Atlas of Cyberspace catalogues thirty year's worth of maps to reveal the rich and varied landscapes of cyberspace -- a world occupied by half a billion users.

The Atlas explores the new cartographic and visualization techniques being employed in the mapping of cyberspace, concentrating on the following main areas:

• Internet infrastructure and traffic flows;
• The World Wide Web;
• Online conversation and community;
• Imagining cyberspace in art, literature and film.

Based on extensive research and written by two of the world's leading cybergeography experts, the Atlas of Cyberspace provides an unprecedented insight into the shape of the Internet and World Wide Web. For anyone with an interest in the structure, content and social dimension of the online world, this is a fascinating and invaluable resource.

Visit Atlas of Cyberspace Download Page

You can download Atlas of Cyberspace in PDF format.

CONTENTS
Contents
Preface : ix
Acknowledgements : xi
1 Mapping cyberspace : 1
Issues to consider when viewing images : 3
Structure of the book : 7
Concluding comment : 8
2 Mapping infrastructure and traffic : 9
Historical maps of telecommunications : 12
Maps from the birth of the Net : 17
Mapping where the wires, fiber-optic cables and
satellites really are : 20
Infrastructure census maps : 25
Domain name maps : 28
Marketing maps of Internet service providers : 30
Interactive mapping of networks : 33
Visualizing network topologies in abstract space : 38
The geography of data flows : 52
Mapping traceroutes : 62
What’s the Net “weather” like today? : 67
Mapping cyberspace usage in temporal space : 70
3 Mapping the Web : 73
Information spaces of the Internet : 75
The beginning of the Web : 79
Mapping individual websites : 80
Mapping tools to manage websites : 90
Mapping website evolution : 102
Mapping paths and traffic through a website : 104
‘The view from above’: 2-D visualization and
navigation of the Web : 114
‘The view from within’: 3-D visualization and
navigation of the Web : 131
4 Mapping conversation and community : 153
Mapping email : 155
Mapping mailing lists and bulletin boards : 158
Mapping Usenet : 164
Mapping chat : 174
Mapping MUDs : 180
Mapping virtual worlds : 195
Mapping game space : 214
5 Imagining cyberspace : 227
Science fiction visions of cyberspace : 229
Cinematic visions of cyberspace : 234
Artistic imaginings: subversive surfing and warping the Web : 241
Imagining the architecture of cyberspace : 251
6 Final thoughts : 257
Further reading : 261
Index : 263

PREFACE
It is now over 30 years since the first Internet connection was made, between nodes installed at UCLA and Stanford University in the United States. Since then, a vast network of information and communications infrastructure has encircled the globe supporting a variety of cyberspace media – email, chat, the Web, and virtual worlds. Such has been the rapid growth of these new communications methods that by the end of 2000 there were over 400 million users connected to the Internet.

Accompanying this growth in the infrastructure, the numbers of users and the available media has been the formation of a new focus for cartography: mapping cyberspace. Maps have been created for all kinds of purposes, but the principal reasons are: to document where infrastructure is located; to market services; to manage Internet resources more effectively; to aid searching, browsing and navigating on the Web; and to explore potential new interfaces to different cyberspace media. In creating these maps, cartographers have used innovative techniques that open up new ways to understand the world around us.

This is the first book to draw together the wide range of maps produced over the last 30 years or so to provide a comprehensive atlas of cyberspace and the infrastructure that supports it. Over the next 300 or so pages, more than 100 different mapping projects are detailed, accompanied by full-colour example maps and an explanation as to how they were created.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Martin Dodge works as a computer technician and researcher in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), at University College London. He maintains the Cyber-Geography Research web site at cybergeography, which includes the original online Atlas of Cyberspaces. With co-author Rob Kitchin, he also wrote the book Mapping Cyberspace (2000).

Rob Kitchin is a Lecturer in Human Geography and research associate of NIRSA at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is the author of Cyberspace (1998) and the co-author of Mapping Cyberspace (2000). He has published three other books and is the general editor of the journal Social and Cultural Geography.

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