In a recent Nature news article, Social sciences: Life’s a game, the possibilities of using massively multiplayer online games as laboratories for computational social science is discussed. The article provides a very interesting overview of this concept, and highlights some work by Ed Castronova. Castronova, one of the pioneers in this field, has both conducted [...]
Monthly Archives: January 2007
Gardens-in-a-Petri
Gardens-in-a-Petri are fractal-shaped bacterial growths in petri dishes. More can be found here. Not that city-shaped, but they could provide some insight into how cities grow and form (or how they don’t, based on the differences in physical structure between these and cities).
Posted in Ideas Comments closed
Canyon of Heroes
I just came back from New York City, and while walking around the Financial District, I learned all about ticker-tape parades. This could be easily done because engraved black granite strips have been placed along the parade-path with informational tidbits. On thee downside, this causes one to walk face-down, making the readers somewhat of a [...]
Posted in City Comments closed
Ant City
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=F6WBavPRNhI] A short film (~10 min.) by John Kieran, Ant City is an entertaining stream-of-consciousness discussion of an ant hill as city, with suitable anthropomorphism used.
Posted in Video Comments closed
City Infographics Discussed in the New Yorker
Last week’s issue of The New Yorker had an interesting piece in the Talk of the Town section called ‘Rap Map’, by Lauren MacIntyre. It’s about information visualization, and in this case, about some researchers who look at a block-by-block breakdown of the people who have been put in prison in a specific year. They [...]
Posted in Maps Comments closed
Fractal Cities
Fractals are often used as a type of mind candy, in the sense that they are cool to look at and think about, but are usually not discussed in a rigorous way. In Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function, they are certainly used properly and are discussed in a highly quantitative manner. Unfortunately, [...]
Posted in Books Comments closed
The Ecumenopolis
Nope, an ecumenopolis is not a religious city, like the Vatican, but rather a ‘world city’, from the Greek which means ‘world city’. The ecumenopolis is the term given to a planet-spanning urban center, and while there are pretty clearly none on Earth (since you would otherwise know about it), ecumenopoli are often featured in [...]
Posted in Ideas Comments closed
Steven Johnson Interview
Steven Johnson is interviewed on Powell’s.com about The Ghost Map, among other things. The Ghost Map is Johnson’s newest book and deals with a whole slew of interdisciplinary issues about cities, biology, disease, information, &c. He’s also a SimCity superfan. Check out the interview (and also his blog for that matter); it’s a good read.
Posted in People Comments closed