<nettime> Re: there is no place in cyberspace

[brian carroll <human@architexturez.com>]

 Michael Benson's post was entertaining and informative. (not entertaining
 in the T.E.D. sense, though). before delving into the ideas involved, the
 statement that `there is no place in cyberspace' seems to be revolving
 around the following paradoxes:

 * immateriality/virtuality and-or materiality
 * cyberspace and-or actual/real/astronomical space
 * relativity of outside-in and-or inside-out perspectives
 * social view of technology and-or technical view of society

 that these paradoxes may be dialectical conundrums of `thesis,
 antithesis, and synthesis' views (of either-or logic) would be
 to dismiss both sides of the paradox, which could be valuable to
 understanding the phenomenon in question.

 there appears to be a roadblock in language, in logic, how to address
 multiple perspectives. the route seems to be `i negate, therefore
 i am.' how to build beyond a criticism and into a knowledge system,
 in the ever-shifting sands of collective reason... how can we use
 our multiple points of view (p.o.v.) of a phenomena, to integrate
 these into a larger, more shared, more diverse and complete view...

 this thread reminds me of ancient maps depicting the cosmos and
 the world. i searched online for examples, there are many, so i
 thought i'd send the url of Odden's Bookmarks. if you click 'browse'
 and then choose `old' and `universe/world' maps, you will find some
 maps depicting gods, goddesses, mythologies, beliefs, and past world
 views and cosmologies. http://oddens.geog.uu.nl/index.html

 these ancient maps could be considered related to mapping cyberspace
 today; evidence that our maps of cyberspace are social constructions.

 [in my search for maps, i came across http://www.newsmaps.com/
 `explore landscapes of information'. the java didn't work on my
 mac-clone, but sending it in case others can get it to work].

 onto and into deep space...

> For his part Virilio raves very entertainingly about how real-time
> transmission is allegedly destroying real space, but for all his brilliant
> points about Renaissance perspective being usurped by the view up, into open
> sky (a "place" wherein the real vanishing points lurk -- or is that 'point
> lurks'?), he never quite grasps that, within the universe's larger frame,
> real-time, light-speed transmissions in fact serve as the true yardstick of
> the vast size of real space. As soon as you get any distance from our little
> data-point, the Earth, this becomes quite clear, because it takes a message
> (or a ray of sunlight) hours, days, or billions of centuries just to get
> around. In other words, real-time _reveals_, it doesn't conceal, real space.

 i too think that cyberspace extends into the deep space network
 of probes and rovers and landers. there is supposed to be an inter-
 planetary intranet being developed to relay signals more effectively
 from far flung space probes. the technology is amazing. nuclear
 batteries. fuel cells. solar cells. electronics. i've heard that
 one of the probes had the battery power of a small flashlight and
 another that of a watch battery, sending signals, speed of light,
 back to ground stations on Earth, millions of miles away. the fact
 that this tranversing of astronomical space and time happens with
 the speed of light as measurement, i do not think passed by Virilio,
 but instead that Virilio made it an Earthly concept. how, for
 example, does one think about radio signal travelling at 186,000
 miles a second, when the fastest physical thing (besides thought,
 speech, sound, and sight, and sensation) is driving a car at 60+
 miles per hour. it is a paradigm of difference. a different order
 of being, of seeing. Virilio understood this as both a cosmological
 (and for him spiritual) speed, and also as natural, human speed
 of thought, of information, of energy in the electronic space-time
 of `the light of speed.' another reasoning word for enlightenment.

 the Voyager Space Probe, to me, is a cyberspatial event par excellence.
 in that it had a literal record of humanity, of languages, of cultures,
 of physiology, of geography, of sound and image... an electronic
 ambassador that exited the solar system sometime ago... an artifact
 of our early electronic civilization, hopefully someday to be found.
 it is a sign of our early cyberspace in astronomical space, and it
 is the farthest extension of humanity in an object we have, besides
 that of our radiating electromagnetic signals... the electromagnetic
 signals will reach places farther and faster than the physical object.
 similarly, on Earth, this same realization has been made over the
 last 2 centuries.

 it seems that astronomical space data will be increasingly valued
 in pragmatic day-to-day terms, such as the effects of solar
 flares caused by sun spots, which spew particles which shower
 Earth and the electrical infrastructure, the Internet, and
 the New Economy, as a result. someday, the electromagnetic
 storm will be a recurring theme on TV news weather forecasts.

 here are some interesting satellite images & maps for public viewing...
 like viewing the solar system, these offer another view of Earth,
 an external vantage from an internalized p.o.v. in electronic cyberspace,
 (which, also constitutes how the satellites work, by transmitting their
 data via our understanding of electromagnetic space-time in both realms)...

bc

------------------------------------------------------------------------
s a t e l l i t e   m a p s
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> SATELLITE METEOROLOGY: The following directories contain image products and
images as they are generated in near real-time by the NRL-Monterey SeaSpace
TeraScan receiving station. Routine images are produced on a nominal 1/2
hour update schedule. We currently do not capture the rapid scan data from
GOES-10. Visible images are only generated during local daylight hours.

http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/projects/sat_products.html

^top   updated: 5/27/2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> METEOSAT IMAGES: These pages provide easy access to the very latest wefax
images transmitted by the Meteosat satellite. We make every effort to ensure
that our pictures are as up-to-date as possible, they'll usually arrive here
within 5 minutes of reception, remember that the times shown in the captions
are in GMT. The images have all been jpeg compressed to about 100Kbytes, but
are otherwise exactly as Meteosat disseminated them - in monochrome with a
resolution of 800 x 800 pixels and with landmass outlines.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/meteosat/

^top   updated: 5/27/2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> SPACE PHYSICS INTERACTIVE DATA RESOURE: SPIDR is a service provided by the
National Geophysical Data Center, Solar-Terrestrial Physics Division, which
allows users to browse, plot, and retrieve data, including DMSP,
Geomagnetic, Ionospheric, Solar, Cosmic, and GOES information. Due to some
of the advanced features of this system, you should have as up-to-date a
browser as you can find.

http://spidr.ngdc.noaa.gov:8080/index.html

^top   updated: 5/27/2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SATELLITE GLOBAL COVERAGE: maps of cloud cover, ozone, winds, and water
vapor around the Earth.

http://motown.gsfc.nasa.gov/global.select/control2.html

^top   updated: 6/2/2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
cartography links from http://www.architexturez.com/

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