Geo

The Revenge of Geography & Place-based Space.
Idea of spaceless space versus place-based space and the connection between cyberspace and geo-space.
Cyberspace ceased to exist with Yahoo law suite: yahoo had to block French based users from yahoo nazi pages. They did this by geolocating ip adresses. After this, ip geo-locating is used for other uses as well such as Google.com (redirects to Google.nl). This has mainly to do with connecting local users to local advertising.

"There is growing demand for the ability to determine the geographical locations of individual Internet users, in order to enforce the laws of a particular jurisdiction, target advertising, or ensure that a website pops up in the right language. These two separate challenges have spawned the development of clever tricks to obscure the physical location of data, and to determine the physical location of users—neither of which would be needed if the Internet truly meant the end of the tyranny of geography." http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/telecom/puttingitinitsplace.html

Geo in Code and Infrastructure

Code and infrastructure of the internet are geo-ed.
Original geo-system:

• http://whois.net
• http://hexilion.com: whois forensics, putting the geo in anything like email addresses, domains, ip, etc.

It is often presumed that whois information is corrupted/messy, lot of spoofing going on due to decentralization. However, if you look at this data more closely it can tell you a lot also personal stuff. Every website has a person registered contact info such telephone number and address.

Geo has been concentrated around servers and traffic. Govcom.org developed the Issuegeographer Dmi.ToolIssueGeographer, which geo-locates the amorphous network by showing where the various organizations are registered. The internet issue network gets geo-located, bringing cyberspace back to earth, like yahoo, revenge of geo
Most every issuenetwork -unless it's very local- is based in western Europe, and east-coast and west-coast of the USA.

Trace route: They also conducted traceroute research. Finding out that packets routes from NL to French speaking Africa go via Paris), and from NL to English speaking Africa via London.

To what extend is the web geo local? Where is there still cyberspace?
Something highly personal on the web (blogs) are depersonalized though hosts. It is impossible to geo-locate blogs when using commercial blogging software.

Ways to geo locate the web

• IP to geo
  • difference between individual ip addresses and ip ranges (countries)
• profiles that include geo locations
• longitude latitude
• textual search (what geo place does a site talk about?)
  • 2 kinds of local: talking about places, and being based at a place

IP2geo tools

• Visualroute http://visualroute.visualware.com (NB: default starting point is USA) or IP2Geo http://ws.cdyne.com/ip2geo/ip2geo.asmx?op=ResolveIP
  
• Try with finding websites per location with sites like http://geourl.org/
• geo-locate tool

• Zoeken naar geo: Kijk naar extensies via www.govcom.org (country domains and their subdomains, allemaal invoeren bij google (bijv. site:.nl), en scrapen met Google Scraper. Daarna beschikbare proxies opzoeken voor IP ranges: Dmi.ToolCensorshipExplorer.
• Global bloggers aggregator: http://www.globalvoicesonline.org

Geo-locating

1. Blogs about city X, where are the blogs based ('geo' the blogs via issuegeographer and IP addresses)
2. Blogs about city X, where are the bloggers based ('geo' the bloggers by scraping the profiles) http://wefeelfine.org/methodology.html
3. Geotagged posts
Geoblogger sites (list taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoTagging): * http://www.maptales.com
* http://socialight.com/
* http://www.geobloggers.com
* http://www.mappr.com
* http://www.grapheety.com
* http://www.michaeltyler.co.uk
* http://www.woophy.com

4. For Dutch locations, use: http://dtgi.detelefoongids.nl/dtgi/NaarPaginaTg.do?pagina=tg_kiesregio&req_source=homepage Almelo Enschede Hengelo Oldenzaal Den Helder Schagen Alkmaar Heerhugowaard Nijmegen Cuijk Groesbeek Wijchen Geleen Sittard Heerlen Kerkrade Landgraaf Brunssum Maastricht Valkenburg Breda Etten-Leur Oosterhout Tilburg Dongen Goirle Oisterwijk Bergen op Zoom Roosendaal Leeuwarden Dokkum Franeker Harlingen Drachten Heerenveen Sneek Hellevoetsluis Spijkenisse Ridderkerk Dordrecht Gorinchem Zwijndrecht Den Bosch Waalwijk Vught Rosmalen Boxtel Oss Uden Veghel Den Haag Rijswijk Voorburg Leidschendam Delft Zoetermeer Naaldwijk Amersfoort Barneveld Harderwijk Soest Ede Wageningen Veenendaal Arnhem Zevenaar Almere Lelystad Dronten Baarn Bussum Hilversum Huizen Weesp Leiden Alphen a/d Rijn Katwijk Hoogeveen Meppel Emmeloord Zwolle Kampen Amsterdam Amstelveen Hoofddorp Diemen Schiphol Assen Roden Emmen Coevorden Venlo Roermond Venray Weert Apeldoorn Epe Deventer Zutphen Rotterdam Schiedam Vlaardingen Hoogvliet Gouda Capelle a/d IJssel Waddinxveen Hoorn Enkhuizen Zwaag Purmerend Zaandam Volendam Krommenie Doetinchem Winterswijk Aalten Haarlem Beverwijk IJmuiden Heemskerk Lisse Groningen Delfzijl Hoogezand-Sappemeer Veendam Eindhoven Helmond Veldhoven Utrecht Nieuwegein Woerden Zeist Tiel Culemborg Geldermalsen Leerdam Middelburg Vlissingen Terneuzen Zierikzee

Resources

• Slater & Miller. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. (2000) with Prof Daniel Miller, Department of Anthropology, University College London. Oxford: Berg. Dedicated website: http://ethnonet.gold.ac.uk
  
• Christine Hine - http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/staff/chine/
• Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu . Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World (2006)

Tools

Check out the CAIDA visualization tools

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