Here’s a link to an interesting NYT story, “Phone-call cartography,” on mapping connectedness via data points from mobile phone calls. The accompanying map was produced by M.I.T.’s SENSEable City Lab using the origin and end point locations for cellphone traffic within the U.S. in July of last year.
Phone-call cartography video:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFKZnbIAboI
Phone-call cartography map:
The “Phone-call cartography” map project is just the latest in a long series of projects the SENSEable City Lab has done using cellphone data to explore the idea of connectedness. In 2008, the group produced a map installation called “New York Time Exchange” for the NYC MoMA’s ‘Design and the Elastic Mind’ exhibition. The installation featured wall-sized maps displaying nearly real-time data on cellphone calls with origins and/or destinations in the New York City area. See this Newsweek article or this NYT article for more information about the “New York Time Exchange” exhibit and how SENSEable’s research is informing our understanding of globalization, the digital divide and other measures of connectedness.
Click here to read an article about SENSEable’s use of real-time cell phone data to analyze the economic impact of New York City’s 2008 ‘Waterfalls’ exhibit in New York Harbor.