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Janelle published his first paper on space-time compression in 1965 in the pages of the reference journal of mapmakers, The Professional Geographer. But he was, of course, blowing up nearly everything professional geography thought it was about. “Geographers, as physicists, have traditionally been concerned with the positions of points (places) in space,” he wrote. “However, geographers have not employed the concept of ‘velocity’ in studying spatial relationships. Yet it might be of value and not too far-fetched for the geographer to ask ‘at what ‘velocities’ are settlements approaching one another?’” We should ask ourselves the same question. At what velocity are you and I getting closer to other points on the planet? Janelle was writing in 1965. He was concerned then about the sound barrier as the practical limit to speed. But imagine his insights applied to an age where networks are switched always on, constantly packing the world ever tighter? Where a mistake or an innovation or an attack in one place can happen instantly and everywhere, because the speed limit is the speed of light?

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At first glance, of course, geography seems the least dynamic of sciences. It is rooted in the glacial-paced realities of geology, a discipline where speed is usually measured in the creaking, inches-a-century advance of tectonic plates. The faster links of transportation, whether they are trains or planes or data connections, lay blanket-like atop that slower-moving geological layer. These high-velocity networks are, in a way, a new geography. Mathematicians and data architects call the landscape they represent a “topology”. The word refers to maps that can be re-arranged as a result of connection, the way in which speed and distance between two points does affect how “far apart” they are. You can think of it this way: Geographies are pretty much constant; topologies can change in an instant. In geographic terms, Moscow and St. Petersburg are always 450 miles apart.

When you hear a network engineer talk about designing for a certain “topology” you should think of hearing an architect describe the natural geography where a bridge or a sky-scraper will one day sit. When you use an app, link to a finance market, or wire yourself with sensors you’re connecting to a topology that has been designed and mapped – and where what you can do is determined by that landscape. An appreciation for tone and movement on a topology is a sign the new sensibility we have called the Seventh Sense. Napoleon saw the battlefields of his age differently than his enemies. They saw flat surfaces for the collision of soldiers, he saw a third dimension, saw air filled with artillery and decisive top-down dominance. Our Seventh Sense masters, those who can perceive a new order emerging, see wired topologies in this same fresh way. Even though these landscapses are often invisible or made up only of narrow fiber strings, it’s important that we try to picture network topologies as real, as alive and buzzing and rich with connection and data, places where fortunes will be made and lost, wars fought – and every bit as influential as physical geography.

Topologies represent the landscape where real-world edifices like the Web or the NYSE or Hizballah are built. They can change shape, instantly, depending on who is

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