EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - New York Talk Exchange uncovers global information flows

New York Talk Exchange uncovers global information flows

Introduction

In an information age, telecommunications such as the Internet and the telephone bind people across space by lifting the constraints of distance. To reveal the relationships that New Yorkers have with the rest of the world, New York Talk Exchange asks: How does the city of New York connect to other cities? With which cities does New York have the strongest ties and how do these relationships shift with time? How does the rest of the world reach into the neighbourhoods of New York? The answers to these questions are visualised in multiple images and videos available on the project website.

Description

The New York Talk Exchange is a project that consists of three parts:

Globe encounters
Pulse of the Planet
World Within New York

Globe encounters illustrates the global exchange of information in real time by visualizing volumes of long distance telephone and IP (Internet Protocol) data flowing between New York and cities around the world. The size of the glow on a particular city location corresponds to the amount of IP traffic flowing between that place and New York City. A greater glow implies a greater IP flow.

The Pulse of the Planet part of the project, illustrates the volume of international calls between New York City and 255 countries over the twenty-four hours in a day. Areas of the world receiving and making fewer phone calls shrink in the images, while areas experiencing a greater amount of voice call activity expand. International cities with the most call activity to and from New York are highlighted according to time zone.

The World Within New York shows how different neighborhoods reach out to the rest of the world via the AT&T telephone network. The city is divided into a grid of 2-kilometer square pixels where each pixel is coloured according to the regions of the world wherein the top connecting cities are located. The widths of the colour bars represent the proportion of world regions in contact with each neighborhood. Encoded within each pixel is also a list of the world cities that account for 70% of the communications with that particular area of New York.

The images and videos in which the findings of the New York Talk Exchange project are visualised are presented online, on the project website. Until May 12th 2008, the project results are on exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York.

Contact info

SENSEable City Laboratory
Cambridge, USA
Phone: 001-617-2537926
Fax: 001-617-2588081

Project start date

//2008

Links

Visit the New York Talk Exchange website Visit the SENSEable City Laboratory's website Click here for more information on the New York Talk Exchange exhibition at MoMa

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment

Keywords

Urban economy