[957] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: maps
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John S. Quarterman)
Fri Jul 12 11:53:47 1991
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 10:14:36 cdt
From: jsq@tic.com (John S. Quarterman)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: mids@tic.com
>jsq@tic.com (John S. Quarterman) writes:
>>As others have been asking lately, why haven't we seen a map of the
>>whole net yet? I don't mean just the Internet, even though that's
>>an increasingly large part of it. I mean the Matrix.
>One possible explanation is that we have the maps (or the mapping
>data), just not the technology or knowhow to represent them well to
>the end user. The UUCP map, the Internet nameservers, the list of ftp
>sites, comp.archives, archie, route tables, etc. represent maps of
>components of the Matrix in various forms, after all.
Indeed.
>Another explanation is that a complete map of the matrix doesn't exist
Yes.
>or cannot be represented.
I don't see why that should be so. Look in any economic atlas and
you'll see maps of all sorts of things that have no physical existence.
Let me give a little background on why a map of the Matrix would be
useful.
I was participating in a roundtable in D.C. recently, and my small group
was discussing network access in the Third World. Someone said ``Have
you seen the map in his book?'' Holding up my copy of The Matrix. Some
said ``yes,'' others ``no,'' and I was wondering which of forty-odd maps
she might be referring to. So she opens the book and turns to the map
of USENET worldwide. What was interesting about it was 1) it showed the
whole world, and 2) Europe, North America, parts of East Asia and Australia
were covered with nodes, and there was next to nothing elsewhere.
That is something that we who use networks all know, but that nothing
but a map can show so clearly, especially to those who don't already
know it.
What Brian's USENET map doesn't show is the other networks
and the services they provide, among other things.
> A related explanation is that's it's
>changing too fast to catch a static snapshot of the data.
On a world scale, it doesn't matter if the data is completely accurate.
I've seen quite good mosaic representations of the whole earth from
low orbit satellite data. For most of the networks other than the
Internet (BITNET, FidoNet, UUCP, etc.), what you have to work with
is relatively static, e.g., updated monthly, anyway.
> (I assume a
>map to be somewhat static by definition -- a map is a representation,
>an encoding of some set of features -- my father, a cartographer by
>profession, tells me that an important and hard problem in mapping is
>deciding what to leave out.)
Indeed. What to leave out and what to put in, and how to represent
what you put in. Those are the interesting questions.
>Random examples of matrix maps that indicate the number of forms maps
>can take:
I'm familiar with those examples. :-) But some of the people on
this list might not be, so it's good you listed them.
Add in the collection efforts of emv and of Hank Nussbacher
(I'm not sure they're aware that they're both doing essentially
the same thing), and most of the raw data is available.
(As you and others have pointed out, however, PostScript
is not what we want: the raw data is what we want.)
So, why do we want a global representation of the Matrix?
Well, how many complaints have we seen recently that the press
doesn't understand the extent or uses of the networks?
How many complaints have we heard from the press that there's
no adequate graphic to print with a network story?
Also, such a map would show very graphically that these networks
cross boundaries, and could show to some extent what services and
resources are available and who uses them.
So, why haven't we seen a map of the whole net yet?
John S. Quarterman
jsq@tic.com
Matrix Information and Directory Services, Inc.
701 Brazos Suite 500
Austin, TX 78701
U.S.A.
