(Roughly) Daily

… But then, as Terry Pratchett observed, “It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.” In any case, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler have mapped its development and impact since roughly 1500. Via Matt Muir, who observes…

I have to be honest, I remain uncertain whether what you will see when you click this link is the product of genius or madness. On the one hand, it might be an incredibly sophisticated piece of visual communications depicting the evolution of thinking across 30 disparate areas (think ‘the biosphere’, ‘time’, ‘biometrics’, ‘communications infrastructure’, that sort of thing) and offering a sort of maximalist overview of the evolution of modern thinking and understanding from approximately 1500 to the near-future; on the other, it might make as much ACTUAL sense when you dig into it as intricate scrawls of mid-episode schizophrenics – I simply cannot tell, it is TOO MUCH. What I can tell you, though, is that it is DIZZYING – you can’t quite get a sense for the full scale of it unless you zoom right out and then see how deep it goes when you zoom in again. Anyway, here’s the blurb – I would really, really like to see this printed BIG somewhere, just to see if it coheres, as I don’t personally think a screen does it justice at all:

“Calculating Empires is a large-scale research visualization exploring how technical and social structures co-evolved over five centuries. The aim is to view the contemporary period in a longer trajectory of ideas, devices, infrastructures, and systems of power. It traces technological patterns of colonialism, militarization, automation, and enclosure since 1500 to show how these forces still subjugate and how they might be unwound. By tracking these imperial pathways, Calculating Empires offers a means of seeing our technological present in a deeper historical context. And by investigating how past empires have calculated, we can see how they created the conditions of empire today. Calculating Empires centers on four themes: communication, computation, classification and control. Across the centuries, the work illustrates the shifts in communication devices, infrastructures, and computational architectures, and how they are entwined with the histories of social control and classification. The vertical axis represents time, beginning with the 16th century at the base. The horizontal axis features a collection of systems: from algorithms to architecture, bodies to borders. Navigation is flexible: you can follow a theme, a time period, or set of ideas.”

Have a look, it’s quite insane…

A long view of tech, society, and their inter-relationships: “Calculating Empires- A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500,” from @katecrawford and @TheCreaturesLab via @Matt_Muir.

* Arthur C. Clarke

###

As we muse on maps, we might recall that it was on this date in 1981 that the game that launched two of the most famous characters in video game history was released for sale:

 Donkey Kong was created by Nintendo, a Japanese playing card and toy company turned fledgling video game developer, who was trying to create a hit game for the North American market. Unable at the time to acquire a license to create a video game based on the Popeye character, Nintendo decided to create a game mirroring the characteristics and rivalry of Popeye and Bluto.  Donkey Kong was named after the game’s villain, a pet gorilla gone rogue. The game’s hero was originally called Jumpman, but is retroactively renamed Mario once the game became popular and Nintendo decided to use the character in future games… Donkey Kong’s success helped Nintendo become one of the dominate players in the video game market.

Source

source