The Global City That Never Sleeps

"Researchers from the senseable city laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a novel project that reveals the complex dynamics of talk that exist between New York and other cities around the globe. The project, called New York Talk Exchange (NYTE), is based around an analysis of telecommunications traffic flowing to and from New York City."

"NYTE uses data flows from the AT&T network that measure the volume of Internet protocol (IP) and voice traffic flowing in and out of New York at a given time. These data are then projected as three large visualizations that will hang at MoMA, and will also be accessible over the web at http://senseable.mit.edu/nyte."

"The first visualization, called Globe Encounters, uses 3-D real-time animations to show New York's global connections to other world cities-a kind of "globalization in real time." The second, called Pulse of the Planet, shows how those connections change over the course of the day as time zones sweep across the planet. It also shows how New York follows a 24-hour schedule, as if it were always awake to connect to the rest of the globe. The third zooms inside New York City's five boroughs and explores how global connections vary from neighborhood to neighborhood-a kind of 'globalization from the bottom.'"

Thanks to Cate Miller