Nestoria Interview – Mark Graham
Mark, your work seems to be at a point of convergence between mapping, society and technology, can you tell us what kind of projects you're interested in at the moment.
I'm interested in two main areas of work really. The first involves the use of the Internet as a tool of development. I've spent a few years doing research in Thailand on this theme: looking at the ways in which silk weavers might benefit from selling their crafts online and potentially bypassing intermediaries. I'm also very interested in the difference that the new fibre-optic broadband cables are making in East Africa. On a more practical level, I am interested in how ICTs can potentially foster a more open type of development and benefit poorer people and communities around the world by simply facilitating more flows of knowledge. I've set up a project called Wikichains.com to attempt to make a contribution in this space. The site is essentially a Wikipedia of commodity chains and aims to let people know more about the things they buy (the ultimate idea being that many people will then buy products and things produced with better environmental/labour/health etc. standards).
The other type of work that I'm interested in relates to the geographies of the Internet. Any work that sets out to ground and map these often invisible flows of information that swirl around us fascinates me.
I first came across you because of a map and article you wrote for The Guardian about Wikipedia's terra incognitos, and I know you've since made a lot of similar maps for floatingsheep. When did you come up with the idea of mapping search terms?
Much of what is done on the floatingsheep.org blog maps the ways in which Google sees the world. For example, we ask questions such as: does Google index more references to "robbery" in London or Liverpool? The idea to do this actually originated from my PhD advisor Matthew Zook at the University of Kentucky in the US. I can't really remember what the first map we made was. I think it was the bible-belt map:
What are some of your favourites?
Probably some of the mappings of virtual references to religion that we've done:
I also like visualising the geographies of Wikipedia. I never expected the encyclopedia to be so geographically uneven. e.g.
Pre-16th Century biographies
Work in progress that I'm looking forward to will be a detailed map of virtual references to every Premiership football team in the UK, and some maps made from geotagged Twitter data.
And what interesting and or disturbing discoveries have you made usingthis method of analysis? I've read in a couple of your posts a concern about class and access still playing a role in preventing an equal spread of information and content.
I worry that the uneven patterns of representation that we see will ultimately become entrenched and reinforced as we increasingly rely on the Internet for our understandings of reality. E.g. if Wikipedia entries are more dense in wealthier parts of the world, those parts of the world inevitably become more visible. The question is will this cultural capital ultimately entrench and reinforce privileged positions occupied by these visible places?
What sort of programs/ products/ applications have you seen recently that have impressed you? I'm talking about people combining mapping and technology in interesting ways to do interesting things in the form of articles, mashups, products or apps etc. and what kind of ideas or technology are you getting excited about that might result in even more interesting applications in the future? (A lot of the mapping people I've spoken to seem to be interested in augmented reality and twitter feeds...?)
The whole augmented reality movement fascinates me too. The idea that we can mash together material space and virtual information is exciting, inspiring and also somewhat terrifying. The apps that allow us to tap into these hybrid spaces or augmented realities only really scratch the surface of what will be possible once the cloud of geocoded data grows increasingly dense (at least in some parts of the world). I suppose I'm most interested in the meta-mapping of these augmented realities. So, I am working on research projects and academic papers that ask questions like:
What kind of information is being provided?
Who is writing this information?
How accurate/reliable is this information?
What sort of power relationships are embedded into it?
How do we get access to it?
How is filtered and ranked?
Do you have any blue sky ideas for new ways of looking at mapping information that you'd love to see but that technology hasn't quite caught up with yet?
Although I am worried about the privacy implications, I would like to see a lot more geographic metadata on physical things. This could be done either through an Internet of Things sort of framework: i.e. embedded into barcodes and Rfid chips, or through more of a Web 2.0/Web Squared framework with millions of contributors chipping in so that we can construct detailed understandings of the material objects the flow around our planet. Apologies for plugging my Wikichains.com project again here, but I think that it is a useful first step in this direction.
Part of my work at nestoria has involved getting hold of geospatial data - mostly from government agencies - and this has been quite challenging in some cases. Is the freeing up of this kind of data something you've ever had a problem with?
Absolutely! Moving from the US to the UK I was shocked about the availability of geographic data here. I had an incredibly difficult time getting even simple datasets. The OS seems to have opened up a lot quite recently though, so things should certainly be a lot easier now.
And finally do you do anything map-geeky, and I mean that in the nicest possibly way, aside from floatingsheep, in your spare time that you'd like to confide in us?
Well, I am quite obsessed with frequent flyer programs and airline route networks. I love the challenge of being able to figure out obscure routes that I can use miles on to get from point A to B.
Thanks very much for answering our questions, Mark. I'll look forward to seeing your Premiership football map th - and maybe a map of air mile routes...
