New Cartographies to Chart Cyberspace

Over the last decade or so there has been a phenomenal growth in the use and diversity of information and communications technologies and the conceptual ‘space’ they support: cyberspace. Understanding the growth of cyberspace, and its myriad of social, economic, and political consequences, as well as the practical tasks of navigating and comprehending the various types or domains of cyberspace (such as the Web, email, real-time chat and instant messaging, file sharing, or 3D virtual worlds) is no easy task. Concepts and techniques from geoinformatics can be usefully employed to promote our understanding and to aid analysis of cyberspace. In particular, maps and map-like interfaces are increasingly becoming useful in representing, and in some senses actually creating, cyberspace. Mapping is thus being recognised as a powerful tool in the visualization and analysis of cyberspace. Therefore in this article the authors of Atlas of Cyberspace discuss how the Internet is being mapped.