Atlas of Cyberspace

There are many books that discuss various aspects of cyberspace, but this one tops them all. Dated yes, but it will give the reader a very balanced look in an interesting fashion. Strongly recommended.

In "The Atlas of Cyberspace", I was anticipating a book patterned on Tufte's "Visual Display of Quantitative Information". Indeed, much of the graphical content of Dodge and Kitchin's book is beautiful, thought-provoking and informative. Unfortunately, the printing is unforgivably bad; the images deserve high quality renderings. Several of the most intriguing hand-drawn and computer-generated images are simply illegible; all of them have lost their textural presence and contrast. The text, on the other hand, ranges from workmanlike commentary on the graphics to watered down post modern cultural analysis. Light editing could remove at least half of the illustrations, providing a tighter focus on the remainder. In many cases, multiple instances of the same type of diagram are presented. Although this may be a start toward serious design analyses, it's distracting in a coffee table book such as this one.The organization is by content rather than by visualization type. The first quarter of the book traces the history of the development of the web, and attempts to map traffic patterns and growth. The next section concentrates on the informational organization of the web, as opposed to the physical or topological. The third quarter maps "community", including more literal instances such as MUDs, as well as purely virtual ones such as discussion groups. The weakest section of the book is the last, which traces "cyberpunk", represented here with quotes from Gibson and Stephenson. This final section includes gratuituous screen shots from "The Matrix" and even more gratuitous "analysis".Despite this book's many shortcomings, there's no alternative, and the fraction of the images that are truly inspiring make "Atlas of Cyberspace" not only worthwhile, but almost necessary.

This was all I expected and more. Over 100 ways of presenting data about the Internet, including fantastic advances in data collection AND analysis AND presentation. Beauty arises from every page. You may need to have a love for mathematics, statistics, the Internet, or just art to "get" this book - but I have a soft spot for all four of those, and fell head over heels.