We Are All Made Of Stars

This image has been stuck in my mind for years (I'm not kidding), but I am glad someone finally recorded it for others to see. This is the blogosphere:



The largest white dot in the center is Dailykos. Considering our stratospheric Technorati ranking, one of the large white dots close to it must be MyDD. Our size will vary depending on whether this picture measures total incoming links (in which case we would be very large), or the number of sites sending incoming links (in which case we would be a little smaller).

Whatever it measures, this image, from Matthew Hurst in the current issue of Discover magazine, which I read religiously as a child, is stunningly beautiful. It even allows you to see the smaller blogospheres within the larger blogosphere. I wonder which blogosphere each cluster represents. Perhaps, gossip blogs in the lower right, tech blogs in the upper portion and slightly to the right? I was always convinced there was an experiential aspect of participation in the blogosphere that is profound, aesthetic and sublime, but I have never done a satisfactory job of putting it into words. My first serious attempt in that regard was a long poem called Warblog, which I abandoned at about the same time I began blogging full-time on MyDD (the methodology of Warblog can be seen here). This image serves as a useful touchstone to return to that line of thought.



This is an open thread on the culture and beauty of the blogosphere. Think of it as a more flexible form of the old MyDD Poetry Fridays.

Update: A more detailed explanation of the image can be found here.

Tags: Blogosphere, Culture (all tags)

Comments

19 Comments

What is that big cluster to the southeast of dKos?

and what level of granularity does this image display?

by MN Campaign Report 2007-04-13 09:05AM | 0 recs
Re: What is that big cluster?

Apparently, the big blue mass mainly (but not exclusively) represents LiveJournal blogs, which dominate most of the southern and right hemispheres, particularly the blue dense mass.

There is another picture on the site that shows this more clearly.

by AmericanJedi 2007-04-13 09:10AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

Some info regarding what everything is, from Matthew Hurst's site:

The larger, denser area of the graph is that part of the blogosphere generally characterised by socio-political discussion (the periphery contains some topical groupings). Above and to the left is that area of the blogosphere concerned with technical discussion and gadgetry.

by AmericanJedi 2007-04-13 09:07AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars
Link?
by Chris Bowers 2007-04-13 09:19AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

Teh Link:

http://datamining.typepad.com/gallery/bl og-map-gallery.html

Second Image comment.

by MNPundit 2007-04-13 09:27AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

That's the future of post-humanity as I see it... writ large on the universe, not just the earth.

by MNPundit 2007-04-13 09:17AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

wow....very cool picture.

by freaktown 2007-04-13 09:23AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

Great post Chris and thanks for tracking down this picture for us.

I've been mutually intrigued by it since seeing it a while ago. Like you, though, I'd love to see more information rather than simply a giant cluster of connectedness.

But, it speaks loudly to the notion that we are all connected/ing. Even those of us on the Right.

by David All 2007-04-13 09:26AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

Please don't post big pictures directly on the main page.  They take forever to load.  I'd sure appreciate it if you'd say what it is and provide a link.

I gotta admit that it is a cool picture, though.

by drlimerick 2007-04-13 09:57AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

As the vast majority of users here have a high-speed connection, I'd recommend you set your browser to not download images, rather than the FP'ers changing their posting habits.  I believe MyDD serves the greatest good comes from making good content easily available to the most people, and if that includes big images, so be it.

To do this in firefox, go to tools--> options --> content, and de-select "load images automatically".  You can also set exceptions on a site-by-site basis.

by aip 2007-04-13 01:50PM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

This will betray my age, but it is quite trippy.  I used to see stuff like that many years ago without even leaving my head! :-)

Cool post, Chris.  What you, Jerome, Matt, Markos, and others have done is amazing.  It is making a difference.

by littafi 2007-04-13 09:57AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

You can tag yourself in that picture at our facebook  group, 10,001 Bloggers Worldwide:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=36 742&id=506002771&ref=nf

Partisan, non-partisan, bi-partisan, etc.

by David All 2007-04-13 10:02AM | 0 recs
It looks like a map of neural pathways

by msnook 2007-04-13 10:28AM | 0 recs
beautiful image, great song

me thinks moby had been listening to a little too much bowie... sounds almost like an homage to heroes.

by colorless green ideas 2007-04-13 10:38AM | 0 recs
Made Of Stars

I think I see Michelle Malkin's blog way over there in the dark area at lower right....

by global yokel 2007-04-13 10:49AM | 0 recs
A similar treatment of Senators

Proximity based on voting record similarity:

also in SVG

by bolson 2007-04-13 11:29AM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

That's great! I should update this old slideshow I did where I contrasted an org chart with Bill Cheswick's old Maps of the internet from 1999.

by Josh Koenig 2007-04-13 12:00PM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

We are stardust, we are golden -- and we've got to get ourselves back to the blogosphere, man. Groovy.

by Oregonian 2007-04-13 05:29PM | 0 recs
Re: We Are All Made Of Stars

Thank you Chris, for linking to my diary over at BIG ORANGE. I am humbled.

I need to spend more time visiting over here and in the future do a little cross-posting here.

Rick

by rickeagle 2007-04-17 04:52PM | 0 recs

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