Sourcemap: visualizing supply-chains for the goods in our lives

Sourcemap shows supply-chain maps that reveal all the places in the world that feed into the common goods we consume in our lives. The service's about page implies that the supply-chain data comes from companies themselves, but there's a lot of what seem to be user-generated maps like this complex map labelled "Laptop Computer". It's a tantalizing set of maps, but I wish there was more information on the data-sources that went into each map.

On the other hand, I'm loving this reconstruction of Western Electric's 1927 telephone manufacturing supply chain by Matthew Hockenberry, who added this information: "This is a reconstruction of the supply chain for the Western Electric produced 'candlestick' style telephones of the late 1920s. Information is largely drawn from archival Western Electric/AT&T materials, as well as those of supplier companies. Some imagery is currently included for cotton and copper sources. This is a rough draft - many details are missing or incomplete."

Sourcemap: where things come from

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Business • Environment • Gadgets • maps

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Brian Sprague

Yeah, well… If today’s announcement by Planetary Resources works out, we’ll need bigger maps.
- digi_owl
  
  Heh, after looking into the back story of Gundam i found myself pondering how much space there is in, well, space. That is, i tried to calculate the approximate area available between the Sun and Pluto’s orbit.
  - desperado
    
    Since it is space, and not just the available amount on the surface of a spheroid, it’d be volume.
    - digi_owl
      
      True, but i wanted to keep it simple for myself. And most orbits are on approximately the same “plane”, no?
      - desperado
        
        True. If we’re talking orbits, you now have the grand daddy of all traffic problems, trying to keep all those buggers rotating without collision.
jetfx

Why do they have to use a Mercator projection for this? Why? It’s just not an appropriate projection for a flow map.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Yannick-Rumpala/717008727 Yannick Rumpala

One step further in a more political direction:

Knowledge and praxis of networks as a political project, 21st Century Society, Volume 4, Issue 3, November 2009, http://www.scribd.com/doc/85760369/Rumpala-Knowledge-and-Praxis-of-Networks-as-a-Political-Project-21st-Century-Society1