HyperCities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities

HyperCities describes "thick mapping: the humanist project of participating and listening that transforms mapping into an ethical undertaking.

Not merely a book about maps in the literal sense, Hypercities puts digital humanities theory into practice to chart the proliferating cultural records of places around the world. A digital platform transmogrified into a book, it explains the ambitious online project of the same name that maps the historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment. The authors examine the media archaeology of Google Earth and the cultural–historical meaning of map projections, and explore recent events—the 'Arab Spring' and the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster—through social media mapping that incorporates data visualizations, photographic documents, and Twitter streams. A collaboratively authored and designed work, HyperCities includes a 'ghost map' of downtown Los Angeles, polyvocal memory maps of LA's historic Filipinotown, avatar-based explorations of ancient Rome, and hour-by-hour mappings of the Tehran election protests of 2009." -- From the Harvard metaLAB