From Reporters Without Borders, a map of the Internet's Black Holes, the states that block or censor the Web.

Hot off the presses, my new article "The Architecture of Hertzian Space" has just appeared in issue 2008:5 of A+U. It's my first time in A+U and I am absolutely delighted that it's the lead article. 

Above, Osman and Omar Khan's fantastic project "Fruits of Our Labor," which I discuss in the article.

The New York Times reports on a McKinsey & Co report that the greenhouse gases emitted to power data centers are becoming a major source of global warming. By 2020, McKinsey suggests, data centers will surpass the airline industry in that respect. 

Meanwhile, scientist James Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, suggests that ethical consumerism and current green industry practices will do nothing to delay the inevitable world-changing climate and that this will occur by 2020 if we're lucky. 

And so, the real may yet be surpassed by the virtual, only not in the way that we always thought...

My good friend Lev has a blog now.

See databeautiful.net

At the New York Review of Books, Nicholson Baker examines the Charms of Wikipedia and raises concerns not about spurious information—something easily corrected—but about the deletion of entire articles by various individuals and groups. 

Even if wireless cities in the developed world are a questionable prospect, wireless certainly has a role to play in other contexts, be they localized networks such as the wireless systems in place in many universities or in parts of the developing world. One system, mesh networking, in which information passes in a distributed fashion from node to node is really too slow for application in places with broadband available, but is a possible solution for areas in developing countries. 

Given how much Tibet has been in the news lately, I thought it appropriate to cite the example of the Dharamsala Wireless Mesh network which was covered by Xeni Jardin in Wired a couple of years ago. In Dharamsala, a community of Tibetian exiles have set up a mesh network to provide Internet connectivity and VoIP services.  

A solar panel atop a shrine provides power for the mesh network. 

[image from the Tibet Technology Center http://tibtec.org/] 

I have always been deeply skeptical of the wireless cities idea. The business models of cities teaming with ISPs to give away free access to the Internet via city-wide wireless networks never made sense, the idea always seemed incompatible with the desires of law enforcement for tracking and surveillance, and the need to upgrade routers every couple of years seemed insurmountable (oh, you live in an 802.11b city…). Moreover, having lived in a dense urban area for a decade, I can attest to the difficulty of having wireless cross one floor of an apartment building, let alone an entire city block. Given current technology limitations, there is just too much interference in dense urban environments to make the wireless city a reality. The most naive ideas suggested that giving away wireless services in cities would somehow lead to economic booms. But urban boosters are given to such ideas (remember the Bilbao-effect?), so it's no great surprise. 

So now it's over, at least in the United States. Read this article at the New York Times. 

Many researchers in networking technology spend their time trying to dream up future uses of the Internet and yet, many the ideas already out there are just so amazing that the make anything we think of seem tame. So for another semi-regular project, I'd like to institute a series titled "Developing Technologies" in which I will look at the rich ways that technology is being harnessed in developing countries.*

Take for example, this story from the BBC (or this one from Australia's the Age). In rural areas of developing countries such as India, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Rwanda, and Cambodia, Internet access is hard to come by. In response, United Villages Corporation has created a store-and-forward system based on kiosks, Wi-Fi units, and buses. Kiosks in villages allow workers to regularly check their e-mail, request information, or place on-line orders for a small fee. Busses that regularly come through the villages are outfitted with Wi-Fi units . When the bus stops, the kiosk and Wi-Fi unit connect. Outbound information is uploaded and inbound information is downloaded to the kiosks. Over 100,000 people now access the Internet in this time delayed fashion. It may not be the experience we are used to, but it allows villagers to have access to a world they otherwise would not be linked to.        

*Yes, I know, I need to get back to some of the other semi-regular features I've initiated this year. I will, I will. Soon.

Yesterday, within the space of five minutes two stories from the major media outlets struck me as hilarious.

The first was from Wired. Some five years after the first show I had at CLUI about One Wilshire, they have a gallery of photographs of the place at Wired.com. Seems like little has changed. Seems like they didn't bother to do anything with the copy of Blue Monday we sent them except get a good idea or two for a somewhat belated photo piece. Seems like they couldn't get any better shots even with their professional team. Wired's looking tired. What's up with that, Chris? I mean really, at least they could have asked Nicholas Carr and me to talk about One Wilshire and the future of such data hotels. THAT would have been interesting. Ah, but you have to love the media. That's why we academics do believe in searching for prior art on a topic and citing it. Even if it means we have to try harder to be original, it makes what we do write about so more interesting.  

Here's a standing offer to Chris and other editors of major technology magazines: give me a theme issue to edit and I'll give you something worth grabbing off the newsstands, not a rehash of five year old work. 

The second was from the New York Times and was entitled "How the Bubble Stayed Under the Radar." In trying to account for the longevity of the bubble, this piece had a bit more content, but its first premise—that nobody saw the bubble coming—was strange. I think I've been talking about it since 2003 or so. Has nobody else noticed? I guess this blog's readership is only in the thousands…

Anyway, this was a classic bubble: only the very deluded believed otherwise (or the very calculating—on a foreign exchange basis, there is no bubble…an American house that has doubled in price since 2002 has seen no gain vs. its value in Euros…but if then that leads you to think of what happened to salaries in the US under GWB). Everyone else (and this means you, real estate agents and bankers) knew it would collapse, they just wanted to cash out first. (financial disclaimer: I got rid of all the REITs in our 401k's a couple of years ago and put them into global equities).

It's still rather surprising to me that Manhattan continues its bubbley behavior. Maybe when the Europeans realize just how little their fabulous investment is netting them given the falling dollar, they'll wise up. Maybe when the most interesting and talented Manhattanites begin to flee in droves to other cities (but where? not many candidates in this country? probably to Europe), it'll begin to happen. 

Most of all, however, I'm amazed by architects. Due to the time involved in making buildings and the heaviness of the capital needed, architecture is traditionally a slow profession. Still, can it really be that architects haven't noticed that the boom is over? Sure, China and Dubai have kept the system on life support, but construction in the former is going to cease the moment the Olympics start and the latter is merely another mad boom economy, entirely fueled by debt (see here). When collapse comes it will be grim and sustained. All too well I remember the recession of the 90s (or that of the 80s) when architects had great opportunities to work at the local café.  

But those of us who have been diligently working in the field of the expanded architect will still be here, welcoming your new ideas with open arms. Now more than ever, working on the periphery to expand what architecture is and what architecture can do is critical for the future of the profession.   

Today's post is an uncomfortable follow up to last week's entry on "the undersea net" and the problems that ensued when a cable was cut in the Mideast. It turns out that more cables have gone offline. Techdirt asks "Did The Warranties Just Run Out On Undersea Cables?" 

One of the cable operators is downplaying suggestions that the any of this is related.